No wonder, therefore, that no such person as Mr. Theodore Hook was connected with the "John Bull." He invariably denied all such connection, and perseveringly protested against the charge that he had ever written a line in it. I have heard it said, that, during the troublous period of the Queen's trial, Sir Robert Wilson met Hook in the street, and said, in a sort of confidential whisper,—"Hook, I am to be traduced and slandered in the 'John Bull' next Sunday." Hook, of course, expressed astonishment and abhorrence. "Yes," continued Wilson, "and if I am, I mean to horsewhip you the first time you come in my way. Now stop; I know you have nothing to do with that newspaper,—you have told me so a score of times; nevertheless, if the article, which is purely of a private nature, appears, let the consequences be what they may, I will horsewhip you!" The article never did appear. I can give no authority for this anecdote, but I do not doubt its truth.

I knew Sir Robert Wilson in 1823, and was employed by him to copy and arrange a series of confidential documents, relative to the Spanish war of independence, between the Cortes and the Government, the result of which was an engagement to act as his private secretary, and to receive a commission in the Spanish service, in the event of Sir Robert's taking a command in Spain. He went to Spain, leaving me as secretary to the fund raised in that year in England to assist the cause. Fortunately for me, British aid began and ended with these subscriptions; no force was raised. Sir Robert returned without taking service in Spain, and I was saved from the peril of becoming a soldier. Sir Robert was a tall, slight man, of wiry form and strong constitution, handsome both in person and features, with the singularly soldier-like air that we read so much of in books. In those days of fervid and hopeful youth, the story of Sir Robert's chivalric and successful efforts to save the life of Lavalette naturally touched my heart, and if I had remained in his service, he would have had no more devoted follower. During my engagement as Secretary to the Spanish Committee, (leading members of which were John Cam Hobhouse, Joseph Hume, and John Bowring,) I contributed articles to the "British Press,"—a daily newspaper, long since deceased,—and this led to my becoming a Parliamentary reporter.

I apologize for so much concerning myself,—a subject on which I desire to say as little as possible,—but in this "Memory" it is more a necessity to do so than it will be hereafter.

I have another story to tell of these editorial times. One day a gentleman entered the "John Bull" office, evidently in a state of extreme exasperation, armed with a stout cudgel. His application to see the editor was answered by a request to walk up to the second-floor front room. The room was empty; but presently there entered to him a huge, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, who, in unmitigated brogue, asked,—

"What do you plase to want, Sir?"

"Want!" said the gentleman,—"I want the editor."

"I'm the idditur, Sir, at your sarvice."

Upon which the gentleman, seeing that no good could arise from an encounter with such an "editor," made his way down stairs and out of the house without a word.

In 1836 Mr. Hook succeeded me in the editorship of the "New Monthly Magazine." The change arose thus. When Mr. Colburn and Mr. Bentley had dissolved partnership, and each had his own establishment, much jealousy, approaching hostility, existed between them. Mr. Bentley had announced a comic miscellany,—or rather, a magazine of which humor was to be the leading feature. Mr. Colburn immediately conceived the idea of a rival in that line, and applied to Hook to be its editor. Hook readily complied. The terms of four hundred pounds per annum having been settled, as usual he required payment in advance, and "then and there" received bills for his first year's salary. Not long afterwards Mr. Colburn saw the impolicy of his scheme. I had strongly reasoned against it,—representing to him that the "New Monthly" would lose its most valuable contributor, Mr. Hook, and other useful allies with him,—that the ruin of the "New Monthly" must be looked upon as certain, while the success of his "Joker's Magazine" was problematical at best. Such arguments prevailed; and he called upon Mr. Hook with a view to relinquish his design. Mr. Hook was exactly of Mr. Colburn's new opinion. He had received the money, and was not disposed, even if he had been able, to give it back, but suggested his becoming editor of the "New Monthly," and in that way working it out. The project met the views of Mr. Colburn; and so it was arranged.

But when the plan was communicated to me, I declined to be placed in the position of sub-editor. I knew, that, however valuable Mr. Hook might be as a large contributor, he was utterly unfitted to discharge editorial duties, and that, as sub-editor, I could have no power to do aught but obey the orders of my superior, while, as co-editor, I could both suggest and object, as regarded articles and contributors. This view was the view of Mr. Colburn, but not that of Mr. Hook. The consequence was that I retired. As to the conduct of the "New Monthly" in the hands of Mr. Hook, until it came into those of Mr. Hood, and, not long afterwards, was sold by Mr. Colburn to Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, it is not requisite to speak.

A word here of Mr. Colburn. I cherish the kindliest memory of that eminent bibliopole. He has been charged with many mean acts as regards authors; but I know that he was often liberal, and always considerate towards them. He could be implacable, but also forgiving; and it was ever easy to move his heart by a tale of sorrow or a case of distress. For more than a quarter of a century he led the general literature of the kingdom; and I believe his sins of omission and commission were very few. Such is my impression, resulting from six years' continual intercourse with him. He was a little, sprightly man, of mild and kindly countenance, and of much bodily activity. His peculiarity was, that he rarely or never finished a sentence, appearing as if he considered it hazardous to express fully what he thought. Consequently one could seldom understand what was his real opinion upon any subject he debated or discussed. His debate was always a "possibly" or "perhaps"; his discussion invariably led to no conclusion for or against the matter in hand.

It was during my editorship of the "New Monthly" that the best of all Hook's works, "Gilbert Gurney," was published in that magazine. The part for the ensuing number was rarely ready until the last moment, and more than once at so late a period of the month, that, unless in the printer's hands next morning, its publication would have been impossible. I have driven to Fulham to find not a line of the article written; and I have waited, sometimes nearly all night, until the manuscript was produced. Now and then he would relate to me one of the raciest of the anecdotes before he penned it down,—sometimes as the raw statement of a fact before it had received its habiliments of fiction, but more often as even a more brilliant story than the reader found it on the first of the month.[D]

Hook was in the habit of sending pen-and-ink sketches of himself in his letters. I have one of especial interest, in which he represented himself down upon knees, with handkerchief to eyes. The meaning was to indicate his grief at being late with his promised article for the "New Monthly," and his begging pardon thereupon. He had great facility for taking off likenesses, and it is said was once suspected of being the "H. B." whose lithographic drawings of eminent or remarkable persons startled society a few years ago by their rare graphic power and their striking resemblance,—barely bordering on caricature.

Here is Hook's contribution to Mrs. Hall's album:—

"Having been requested to do that which I never did in my life before,—write two charades upon two given and by no means sublime words,—here are they. It is right to say that they are to be taken with reference to each other.

"My first is in triumphs most usually found; Old houses and trees show my second; My whole is long, spiral, red, tufted, and round, And with beef is most excellent reckoned.

My first for age hath great repute; My second is a tailor; My whole is like the other root,— Only a little paler.

"THEODORE E. HOOK.

"September 4, 1835.

"Do you give them up?

"Car-rot. Par-snip."

The reader will permit me here to introduce some memories of the immediate contemporaries and allies of Hook, whose names are, indeed, continually associated with his, and who, on the principle of "'birds of a feather," may be properly considered in association with this master-spirit of them all.

The Reverend Mr. Barham, whose notes supplied material for the "Memoirs of Hook," edited by his son, and whose "Ingoldsby Legends" are famous, was a stout, squat, and "hearty-looking" parson of the old school. His face was full of humor, although when quiescent it seemed dull and heavy; his eyes were singularly small and inexpressive, whether from their own color or the light tint of the lashes I cannot say, but they seemed to me to be what are called white eyes. I do not believe that in society he had much of the sparkle that characterized his friend, or that might have been expected in so formidable a wit of the pen. Sam Beazley, on the contrary, was a light, airy, graceful person, who had much refinement, without that peculiar manner which bespeaks the well-bred gentleman. He was the Daly of "Gilbert Gurney," whose epitaph was written by Hook long before his death,—

"Here lies Sam Beazeley, Who lived and died easily."[E]

When I knew him, he was practising as an architect in Soho Square. He was one of Hook's early friends, but I believe they were not in close intimacy for many years previous to the death of Hook. It was by Beazley that the present Lyceum Theatre was built.

Tom Hill was another of Hook's more familiar associates. He is the Hull of "Gilbert Gurney," and is said to have been the original of Paul Pry, (which Poole, however, strenuously denied,)—a belief easily entertained by those who knew the man. A little, round man he was, with straight and well-made-up figure, and rosy cheeks that might have graced a milkmaid, when his years numbered certainly fourscore.[F] But his age no one ever knew. The story is well known of James Smith asserting that it never could be ascertained, for that the register of his birth was lost in the fire of London, and Hook's comment,—"Oh, he's much older than that: he's one of the little Hills that skipped in the Bible." He was a merry man, toujours gai, who seemed as if neither trouble nor anxiety had ever crossed his threshold or broken the sleep of a single night of his long life. His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from the minister of state to the stable-boy; and there are tales enough told of his chats with child-maids in the Park, to ascertain the amounts of their wages, and with lounging footmen in Grosvenor Square, to learn how many guests had dined at a house the day previous. His curiosity seemed bent upon prying into small things; for secrets that involved serious matters he appeared to care nothing. "Pooh, pooh, Sir, don't tell me; I happen to know!" That phrase was continually coming from his lips.

Of a far higher and better order was Hook's friend, Mr. Brodrick,—so long one of the police magistrates,—a gentleman of large acquirements and sterling rectitude. Nearly as much may be said of Dubois, more than half a century ago the editor of a then popular magazine, "The Monthly Mirror." Dubois, in his latter days, enjoyed a snug sinecure, and lived in Sloane Street. He was a pleasant man in face and in manners, and retained to the last much of the humor that characterized the productions of his earlier years. To the admirable actor and estimable gentleman, Charles Mathews, I can merely allude. His memory has received full honor and homage from his wife; but there are few who knew him who will hesitate to indorse her testimony to his many excellences of head and heart.

Among leading contributors to the "New Monthly," both before and after the advent of Mr. Hook, was John Poole, the author of "Little Pedlington," "Paul Pry," and many other pleasant works, not witty, but full of true humor. He was, when in his prime, a pleasant companion, though nervously sensitive, and, like most professional jokers, exceedingly irritable whenever a joke was made to tell against himself. It is among my memories, that, during the first month of my editorship of the "New Monthly," I took from a mass of submitted manuscripts one written in a small, neat hand, entitled "A New Guide-Book." I had read it nearly half through, and was about to fling it with contempt among "the rejected" before I discovered its point. I had perused it so far as an attempt to describe an actual watering-place, and to bring it into notoriety. When, however, I did discover the real purpose of the writer, my delight was large in proportion. The manuscript was the first part of "Little Pedlington," which subsequently grew into a book.

It is, and was at the time, generally believed that Tom Hill suggested the character of Paul Pry. Poole never would admit this. In a sort of rambling autobiography which he wrote to accompany his portrait in the "New Monthly," he thus gives the origin of the play.

"The idea of the character of Paul Pry was suggested to me by the following anecdote, related to me several years ago by a beloved friend. An idle old lady, living in a narrow street, had passed so much of her time in watching the affairs of her neighbors, that she at length acquired the power of distinguishing the sound of every knocker within hearing. It happened that she fell ill and was for several days confined to her bed. Unable to observe in person what was going on without, she stationed her maid at the window, as a substitute, for the performance of that duty. But Betty soon grew weary of that occupation; she became careless in her reports, impatient and tetchy when reprimanded for her negligence.

"'Betty, what are you thinking about? Don't you hear a double knock at No. 9? Who is it?'

"'The first-floor lodger, Ma'am.'

"'Betty, Betty, I declare I must give you warning. Why don't you tell me what that knock is at No. 54?'

"'Why, lor, it's only the baker with pies.'

"'Pies, Betty? What can they want with pies at 54? They had pies yesterday!'"

Poole had the happy knack of turning every trifling incident to valuable account. I remember his telling me an anecdote in illustration of this faculty. I believe he never printed it. Being at Brighton one day, he strolled into an hotel to get an early dinner, took his seat at a table, and was discussing his chop and ale, when another guest entered, took his stand by the fire, and began whistling. After a minute or two,—

"Fine day, Sir," said he.

"Very fine," answered Poole.

"Business pretty brisk?"

"I believe so."

"Do anything with Jones on the Parade?"

"Now," said Poole, "it so happened that Jones was the grocer from whom I occasionally bought a quarter of a pound of tea; so I answered,—

"'A little.'

"'Good man, Sir,' quoth the stranger.

"'Glad to hear it, Sir.'

"'Do anything with Thomson in King Street?'

"'No, Sir.'

"'Shaky, Sir.'

"'Sorry to hear it, Sir; recommend Mahomet's baths!'

"'Anything with Smith in James Street?'

"'Nothing,—I have heard the name of Smith before, certainly; but of this particular Smith I know nothing.'"

The stranger looked at Poole earnestly, advanced to the table, and with his arms a-kimbo said,—

"By Jove, Sir, I begin to think you are a gentleman!"

"I hope so, Sir," answered Poole; "and I hope you are the same!"

"Nothing of the kind," said the stranger; "and if you are a gentleman, what business have you here?"

Upon which he rang the bell, and, as the waiter entered, indignantly exclaimed,—

"That's a gentleman,—turn him out!"

Poole had unluckily entered and taken his seat in the commercial room of the hotel!

All who knew Poole know that he was ever full of himself,—believing his renown to be the common talk of the world. A whimsical illustration of this weakness was lately told me by a mutual friend. When at Paris recently, he chanced to say to Poole, "Of course you are full of all the theatres."—"No, Sir, I am not," he answered, solemnly and indignantly. "Will you believe this? I went to the Opera Comique, told the Director I wished a free admission; he asked me who I was; I said, 'John Poole.' Sir, I ask you, will you believe this? He said, he didn't know me!"

The Queen gave him a nomination to the Charter-House, where his age might have been passed in ease, respectability, comfort, and competence; but it was impossible for one so restless to bear the wholesome and necessary restraint of that institution. He came to me one day, boiling over with indignation, having resolved to quit its quiet cloisters, his principal ground for complaint being that he must dine at two o'clock and be within walls by ten. He resigned the appointment, but subsequently obtained one of the Crown pensions, took up his final abode in Paris, where, during the last ten years of his life, he lived, if that can be called "life" which consisted of one scarcely ever interrupted course of self-sacrifice to eau-de-vie. His mind was of late entirely gone. I met him in 1861, in the Rue St. Honore, and he did not recognize me, a circumstance I could scarcely regret.

I am not aware of any details concerning his death. When I last inquired concerning him, all I could learn was that he had gone to live at Boulogne,—that two quarters had passed without any application from him for his pension,—and that therefore, of course, he was dead. His death, however, was a loss to none, and I believe not a grief to any.

He was a tall, handsome man, by no means "jolly," like some of his contemporary wits,—rather, I should say, inclined to be taciturn; and I do not think his habits of drinking were excited by the stimulants of society.[G] Little, I believe, is known of his life, even to the actors and playwrights, with whom he chiefly associated, from the time when his burlesque of "Hamlet Travestie" (printed in 1810) commenced his career of celebrity, if not of fame, to his death, (in the year 1862, I believe,) being then probably about seventy years old.

I knew Dr. Maginn when he was a schoolmaster in Cork. He had even then established a high reputation for scholastic knowledge, and attained some eminence as a wit; and about the year 1820 astounded "the beautiful city" by poetical contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," in which certain of its literary citizens were somewhat scurrilously assailed. I was one of them. There were two parties, who had each their "society." Maginn and a surgeon named Gosnell were the leaders of one: they were, for the most part, wild and reckless men of talent. The other society was conducted by the more sedate and studious. Gosnell wrote the ottava rima entitled "Daniel O'Rourke," which passed through three or four numbers of "Blackwood": he died not long afterwards in London, one of the many unhappy victims of misgoverned passions.

Maginn was also one of the earlier contributors to the "Literary Gazette," and Jerdan has recorded with what delight he used to open a packet directed in the well-known hand, with the post-mark Cork. The Doctor, it is said, was invited to London in order to share with Hook the labors of the "John Bull." I believe, however, he was but a very limited help. Perhaps the old adage, "Two of a trade," applied in this case; certain it is that he subsequently found a more appreciative paymaster in Westmacott, who conducted "The Age," a newspaper then greatly patronized, but, as I have said, one that now would be universally branded with the term "infamous."

It is known also that he became a leading contributor to "Fraser's Magazine,"—a magazine that took its name less from its publisher, Fraser, than from its first editor, Fraser, a barrister, whose fate, I have understood, was as mournful as his career had been discreditable. The particulars of Maginn's duel with Grantley Berkeley are well known. It arose out of an article in "Fraser," reviewing Berkeley's novel, in the course of which he spoke in utterly unjustifiable terms of Berkeley's mother. Mr. Berkeley was not satisfied with inflicting on the publisher so severe a beating that it was the proximate cause of his death, but called out the Doctor, who manfully avowed the authorship. Each, it is understood, fired five shots, without further effect than that one ball struck the whisker of Mr. Berkeley and another the boot of Maginn, and when Fraser, who was Maginn's second, asked if there should be another shot, Maginn is reported to have said, "Blaze away, by ——! a barrel of powder!"

The career of Maginn in London was, to say the least, mournful. Few men ever started with better prospects; there was hardly any position in the state to which he might not have aspired. His learning was profound; his wit of the tongue and of the pen ready, pointed, caustic, and brilliant; his writings, essays, tales, poems, scholastic disquisitions, in short, his writings upon all conceivable topics, were of the very highest order; "O'Doherty" is one of the names that made "Blackwood" famous. His acquaintances, who would willingly have been his friends, were not only the men of genius of his time, but among them were several noblemen and statesmen of power as well as rank. In a word, he might have climbed to the highest round of the ladder, with helping hands all the way up: he stumbled at its base.

Maginn's reckless habits soon told upon his character, and almost as soon on his constitution. They may be illustrated by an anecdote related of him in Barham's Life of Hook. A friend, when dining with him, and praising his wine, asked where he got it. "At the tavern, close by," said the Doctor. "A very good cellar," said the guest; "but do you not pay rather an extravagant price for it?" "I don't know, I don't know," returned the Doctor; "I believe they do put down something in a book." And I have heard of Maginn a story similar to that told of Sheridan, that, once when he accepted a bill, he exclaimed to the astonished creditor, "Well, thank Heaven, that debt is off my mind!"

It is notorious that Maginn wrote at the same time for the "Age," outrageously Tory, and for the "True Sun," a violently Radical paper. For many years he was editor of the "Standard." It was, however, less owing to his thorough want of principle than to his habits of intoxication that his position was low, when it ought to have been high,—that he was indigent, when he might have been rich,—that he lost self-respect, and the respect of all with whom he came in contact, except the few "kindred spirits" who relished the flow of wit, and little regarded the impure source whence it issued. The evil seemed incurable; it was indulged not only at noon and night, but in the morning. He was one of the eight editors engaged by Mr. Murray to edit the "Representative" during the eight months of its existence. I was a reporter on that paper of great promise and large hopes. One evening Maginn himself undertook to write a notice of a fancy-ball at the Opera-House in aid of the distressed weavers of Spitalfields. It was a grand affair, patronized by the royal family and a vast proportion of the aristocracy of England. Maginn went, of course inebriated, and returned worse. He contemplated the affair as if it had taken place among the thieves and demireps of Whitechapel, and so described it in the paper of the next morning. Well I remember the wrath and indignation of John Murray, and the universal disgust the article excited.

I may relate another anecdote to illustrate this sad characteristic. It was told to me by one of the Doctor's old pupils and most intimate and steady friends, Mr. Quinten Kennedy of Cork. A gentleman was anxious to secure Maginn's services for a contemplated literary undertaking of magnitude, and the Doctor was to dine with him to arrange the affair. Kennedy was resolved, that, at all events, he should go to the dinner sober, and so called upon him before he was up, never leaving him for a moment all day, and resolutely resisting every imploring appeal for a dram. The hour of six drew near, and they sallied out. On the way, Kennedy found it almost impossible, even by main force, to prevent the Doctor entering a public-house. Passing an undertaker's shop, the Doctor suddenly stopped, recollected he had a message there, and begged Kennedy to wait for a moment outside,—a request which was readily complied with, as it was thought there could be no possible danger in such a place. Maginn entered, with his handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing bitterly. The undertaker, recognizing a prospective customer, sought to subdue his grief with the usual words of consolation,—Maginn blubbering out, "Everything must be done in the best style, no expense must be spared,—she was worthy, and I can afford it." The undertaker, seeing such intense grief, presented a seat, and prescribed a little brandy. After proper resistance, both were accepted; a bottle was produced and emptied, glass after glass, with suggested "instructions" between whiles. At length the Doctor rose to join his wondering and impatient friend, who soon saw what had happened. He was, even before dinner, in such a state as to preclude all business-talk; and it is needless to add that the contemplated arrangement was never entered into.

He lived in wretchedness, and died in misery in 1842. His death took place at Walton-on-Thames, and in the churchyard of that village he is buried. Not long ago I visited the place, but no one could point out to me the precise spot of his interment. It is without a stone, without a mark, lost among the clay sepulchres of the throng who had no friends to inscribe a name or ask a memory.[H]

Maginn was rather under than above the middle size; his countenance was swarthy, and by no means genial in expression. He had a peculiar thickness of speech, not quite a stutter. Latterly, excesses told upon him, producing their usual effects: the quick intelligence of his face was lost; his features were sullied by unmistakable signs of an ever-degrading habit; he was old before his time.

He is another sad example to "warn and scare"; a life that might have produced so much yielded comparatively nothing; and although there have been several suggestions, from Lockhart and others, to collect his writings, they have never been gathered together from the periodical tombs in which they lie buried, and now, probably, they cannot be all recognized.

* * * * *

From what I have written, the reader will gather that I knew Hook only in his decline, the relic of a manly form, the decadence of a strong mind, and the comparative exhaustion of a brilliant wit. Leigh Hunt, speaking of him at a much earlier period, thus writes:—"He was tall, dark, and of a good person, with small eyes, and features more round than weak: a face that had character and humor, but no refinement." And Mrs. Mathews describes him as with sparkling eyes and expressive features, of manly form, and somewhat of a dandy in dress. When in the prime of manhood and the zenith of fame, Mr. Barham says, "He was not the tuft-hunter, but the tuft-hunted"; and it is easy to believe that one so full of wit, so redolent of fun, so rich in animal spirits, must have been a marvellously coveted acquaintance in the society where he was so eminently qualified to shine: from that of royalty to the major and minor clubs,—from "The Eccentrics" to "The Garrick," of which he was all his life long a cherished member.

In 1825, when I first saw him, he was above the middle height, robust of frame, and broad of chest, well-proportioned, with evidence of great physical capacity. His complexion was dark, as were his eyes; there was nothing fine or elevated in his expression; indeed, his features, when in repose, were heavy; it was otherwise when animated; yet his manners were those of a gentleman, less perhaps from inherent faculty than from the polish which refined society ever gives.

He is described as a man of "iron energies," and certainly must have had an iron constitution; for his was a life of perpetual stimulants, intellectual as well as physical.

When I saw him last,—it was not long before his death,—he was aged, more by care than time; his face bore evidence of what is falsely termed "a gay life"; his voice had lost its roundness and force, his form its buoyancy, his intellect its strength,—

"Alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!"

Yet his wit was ready still; he continued to sparkle humor even when exhausted nature failed; and his last words are said to have been a brilliant jest.

At length the iron frame wore down. He was haunted by pecuniary difficulties, yet compelled to daily work, not only for himself, but for a family of children by a person to whom he was not married. He then lived almost entirely on brandy, and became incapable of digesting animal food.

Well may his friend Lockhart say, "He came forth, at best, from a long day of labor at his writing-desk, after his faculties had been at the stretch,—feeling, passion, thought, fancy, excitable nerves, suicidal brain, all worked, perhaps wellnigh exhausted."

And thus, "at best," while "seated among the revellers of a princely saloon," sometimes losing at cards among his great "friends" more money than he could earn in a month, his thoughts were laboring to devise some mode of postponing a debt only from one week to another. Well might he have compared, as he did, his position to that of an alderman who was required to relish his turtle-soup while forced to eat it sitting on a tight rope!

The last time he went out to dinner was with Colonel Shadwell Clarke, at Brompton Grove. While in the drawing-room he suddenly turned to the mirror and said, "Ay! I see I look as I am,—done up in purse, in mind, and in body, too, at last!"

He died on the 24th of August, 1841.

Yes, when I knew most of him, he was approaching the close, not of a long, but of a "fast" life; he had ill used Time, and Time was not in his debt! He was tall and stout, yet not healthfully stout; with a round face which told too much of jovial nights and wasted days,—of toil when the head aches and the hand shakes,—of the absence of self-respect,—of mornings of ignoble rest to gather strength for evenings of useless energy,—of, in short, a mind and constitution vigorous and powerful: both had been sadly and grievously misapplied and misused.

No writer concerning Hook can claim for him an atom of respect. His history is but a record of written or spoken or practical jokes that made no one wiser or better; his career "points a moral" indeed, but it is by showing the wisdom of virtue. In the end, his friends, so called, were ashamed openly to give him help,—and although bailiffs did not, as in the case of Sheridan,

"Seize his last blanket,"

his death-bed was haunted by apprehensions of arrest; and it was a relief, rather than a loss to society, when a few comparatively humble mourners laid him in a corner of Fulham churchyard.

Alas! let not those who read the records of many distinguished, nay, many illustrious lives, imagine, that, because men of genius have too often cherished the perilous habit of seeking consolation or inspiration from what it is a libel on Nature to call "the social glass," it is therefore reasonable or excusable, or can ever be innocuous. Talfourd may gloss it over in Lamb, as averting a vision terrible; Seattle may deplore it in Campbell, as having become a dismal necessity; the biographer of Hook may lightly look upon the curse as the springhead of his perpetual wit. I will not continue the list,—it is frightfully long. Hook is but one of many men of rare intellect, large mental powers, with faculties designed and calculated to benefit mankind, who have sacrificed character, life, I had almost said SOUL, to habits which are wrongly and wickedly called pleasures,—the pleasures of the table. Many, indeed, are they who have thus made for themselves miserable destinies, useless or pernicious lives, and unhonored or dishonorable graves. I will add the warning of Wordsworth, when addressing the sons of Burns:—

"But ne'er to a seductive lay Let faith be given, Nor deem the light that leads astray Is light from heaven."

FOOTNOTES:

[B] In "Gilbert Gurney," Hook makes Daly say, "I am the man; I did it; for originality of thought and design, I do think that was perfect."

[C] Mr. Barham has a confused account of this incident. He was not present on the occasion, as I was, standing close by the piano when it occurred.

[D] His biographer does not seem aware that for several months before he became editor of the "New Monthly" he wrote the "Monthly Commentary" for that magazine,—a pleasant, piquant, and sometimes severe series of comments on the leading topics or events of the month.

[E] Mr. Peake, the dramatist, who wrote most of the "Mathews at Home," attributes this epitaph to John Hardwicke. Lockhart gives it to Hook. Hook pictures Beazley in "Gilbert Gurney":—"His conversation was full of droll conceits, mixed with a considerable degree of superior talent, and the strongest evidence of general acquirements and accomplishments."

[F] "He was plump, short, with an intelligent countenance, and near-sighted, with, a constitution and complexion fresh enough to look forty, when I believed him to be at least four times that age."—Gilbert Gurney.

[G] He played a practical joke upon the actors of the Brighton Theatre, who were defective of a letter in their dialogue, by sending to them a packet, containing, on cards of various sizes, the letter H.

[H] While on his death-bed, Sir Robert Peel sent him a sum of money, probably not the first. It arrived in time to pay his funeral expenses. In September, 1842, a subscription was made for the widow and children of Dr. Maginn,—Dr. Giffard (then editor of the "Standard") and Lockhart being trustees in England, the Bishop of Cork and the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in Ireland, and Professor Wilson in Scotland. The card that was issued said truly,—"No one ever listened to Maginn's conversation, or perused even the hastiest of his minor writings, without feeling the interest of very extraordinary talent; his classical learning was profound and accurate; his mastery of modern languages almost unrivalled; his knowledge of mankind and their affairs great and multifarious"; but it did not state truly, that, "in all his essays, verse or prose, serious or comic, he never trespassed against decorum or sound morals," or that "the keenness of his wit was combined with such playfulness of fancy, good-humor, and kindness of natural sentiment, that his merits were ungrudgingly acknowledged even by those of politics most different from his own."



THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

IV.

LITTLE FOXES.—PART III.

Being the true copy of a paper read in my library to my wife and Jennie.

REPRESSION.

I am going now to write on another cause of family unhappiness, more subtile than either of those before enumerated.

In the General Confession of the Church, we poor mortals all unite in saying two things: "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done." These two heads exhaust the subject of human frailty.

It is the things left undone which we ought to have done, the things left unsaid which we ought to have said, that constitute the subject I am now to treat of.

I remember my school-day speculations over an old "Chemistry" I used to study as a text-book, which informed me that a substance called Caloric exists in all bodies. In some it exists in a latent state: it is there, but it affects neither the senses nor the thermometer. Certain causes develop it, when it raises the mercury and warms the hands. I remember the awe and wonder with which, even then, I reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf, and dumb comforts which Nature had thus stowed away. How mysterious it seemed to me that poor families every winter should be shivering, freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had all this latent caloric locked up in her store-closet,—when it was all around them, in everything they touched and handled!

In the spiritual world there is an exact analogy to this. There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression.

Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just before a snow-storm, sit at work in a room that was judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer? You do not freeze, but you shiver; your fingers do not become numb with cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. You long for a shawl or cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be complained of,—it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper thing,—the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver, and feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an angel.

Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, is the lot of many natures, which are not warm, when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to be warm,—whose life is cold and barren and meagre,—which never see the blaze of an open fire.

I will illustrate my meaning by a page out of my own experience.

I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar,—a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning.

Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one!—for her husband was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and solid as adamant,—and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose for her. "It was quite a Providence," sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed tenderly, and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom, during the marriage ceremony.

I remember now the bustle of the day,—the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bridemaids, and bridecakes, the losing of trunk-keys and breaking of lacings, the tears of mamma—God bless her!—and the jokes of irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life of him, see nothing so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were as well off himself.

And so Emmy was wheeled away from us on the bridal tour, when her letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, frisky little bits of scratches,—as full of little nonsense-beads as a glass of Champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was, and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc., etc.

Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built; but while it was building, they were to live with his mother, who was "such a good woman," and his sisters, who were also "such nice women."

But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy's letters. They grew shorter; they seemed measured in their words; and in place of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee, came anxiously worded praises of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy.

John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired. Still he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she could reasonably expect,—of course she could not be like her own mamma; and Mary and Jane were very kind,—"in their way," she wrote, but scratched it out, and wrote over it, "very kind indeed." They were the best people in the world,—a great deal better than she was; and she should try to learn a great deal from them.

"Poor little Em!" I said to myself, "I am afraid these very nice people are slowly freezing and starving her." And so, as I was going up into the mountains for a summer tour, I thought I would accept some of John's many invitations and stop a day or two with them on my way, and see how matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at last, I found the treasures worth taking.

I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evan's house. It was the house of the village,—a true, model, New England house,—a square, roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a hillside under a group of great, breezy old elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house, with all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It looked like a house all finished, done, completed, labelled, and set on a shelf for preservation; but, as is usual with this kind of edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest appearance of being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or blink of life: the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, pale-blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney.

And now for the people in the house.

In making a New England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in the glacial spare-chamber, that had been kept from time immemorial as a refrigerator for guests,—that room which no ray of daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze which is kindled a few moments before bed-time in an atmosphere where you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of your own body.

Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation, or that you came on the wrong day; but no, you find in due course that you were invited, you were expected, and they were doing for you the best they know how, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be treated.

If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in the domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready to leave, you really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got to feeling at home with them.

Three months after, you go to see them again, when, lo! there you are, back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for comfortable converse.

The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front-parlor, with Judge Evans, his wife, and daughters, fully accounted for the change in Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual atmosphere; and there are some so stately, so correct, that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten or the most impudent Scotch terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on entering, that nothing but correct deportment, an erect posture, and strictly didactic conversation is possible there.

The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, bent on improvement, laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put forth its head in the neighborhood, of which they were not the support and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township of ——; he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman, as set forth by Solomon; the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in erect propriety, in their respective corners each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle,—she so collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to "entertain strangers," and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves for what they were, most high-principled, well-informed, intelligent women,—I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped in some petrifying spring and was beginning to feel myself slightly crusting over on the exterior.

This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one's carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself like a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man,—if Mrs. Evans ever was a girl,—if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when he was.

I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which I had observed in John's writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,—of sundry little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired corners,—and wondered whether the models of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how came they ever to be married?

I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,—she, the wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to us,—that little unpunctuated scrap of life's poetry, full of little exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her little mobile face,—an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness, as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them, and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back, and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but "the spirits" were too strong for me; I couldn't do it.

I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat her John in the days of their engagement,—the little ways, half loving, half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over him. Now she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anxious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little deviations from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off, like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then, as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill pond,—in fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration, that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and marshal me to my room.

When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat, laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on to my knee.

"It does look so like home to see you, Chris!—dear, dear home!—and the dear old folks! There never, never was such a home!—everybody there did just what they wanted to, didn't they, Chris?—and we love each other, don't we?"

"Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improperly, "you aren't happy here."

"Not happy?" she said, with a half-frightened look,—"what makes you say so? Oh, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should be very unreasonable and wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, I assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can't be like our folks at home. That I should not expect, you know,—people's ways are different,—but then, when you know people are so good, and all that, why, of course you must be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to learn to control my feelings, you know, and not give way to impulses. They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings,—they always do right. Oh, they are quite wonderful!"

"And agreeable?" said I.

"Oh, Chris, we mustn't think so much of that. They certainly aren't pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they never scold, they always are good. And we oughtn't to think so much of living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our duty, don't you think so?"

"All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a ramrod, and their front-parlor is like a tomb. You mustn't let them petrify him."

Her face clouded over a little.

"John is different here from what he was at our house. He has been brought up differently,—oh, entirely differently from what we were; and when he comes back into the old house, the old business, and the old place between his father and mother and sisters, he goes back into the old ways. He loves me all the same, but he does not show it in the same ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it on trust. He is very busy,—works hard all day, and all for me; and mother says women are unreasonable that ask any other proof of love from their husbands than what they give by working for them all the time. She never lectures me, but I know she thought I was a silly little petted child, and she told me one day how she brought up John. She never petted him; she put him away alone to sleep, from the time he was six months old; she never fed him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact obedience. I remember John's telling me of his running to her once and hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without wiping his shoes, and she took off his arms and said, 'My son, this isn't the best way to show love. I should be much better pleased to have you come in quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and kiss me when you forget to do what I say.'"

"Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, being then only twenty-three.

"Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say to you, if this is the way you are going to talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam darted into her eyes. "Really, however, I think she carried things too far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how he was brought up."

"Poor fellow!" said I. "I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there inside of the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round."

"They are all warm-hearted inside," said Emily. "Would you think she didn't love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It's perfectly dreadful sometimes to see how intense she is when anything concerns him; it's her principle that makes her so cold and quiet."

"And a devilish one it is!" said I.

"Chris, you are really growing wicked!"

"I use the word seriously, and in good faith," said I. "Who but the Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and keeping the most heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key that for the greater part of our lives we get no use of it? Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I'll venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen islands, knowing as little of each other's inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of ice,—and all because a cursed principle in the heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to Nature."

"Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age, and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been. The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I couldn't help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes; but her mother looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and said, in her dry voice,—

"'Jane, what's the matter?'

"'Oh, my head aches dreadfully, and I have pains in all my limbs!'

"I wanted to jump and run to do something for her,—you know at our house we feel that a sick person must be waited on,—but her mother only said, in the same dry way,—

"'Well, Jane, you've probably got a cold; go into the kitchen and make yourself some good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, and go to bed at once'; and Jane meekly departed.

"I wanted to spring and do these things for her; but it's curious, in this house I never dare offer to do anything; and mother looked at me, as she went out, with a significant nod,—

"'That's always my way; if any of the children are sick, I never coddle them; it's best to teach them to make as light of it as possible.'"

"Dreadful!" said I.

"Yes, it is dreadful," said Emmy, drawing her breath, as if relieved that she might speak her mind; "it's dreadful to see these people, who I know love each other, living side by side and never saying a loving, tender word, never doing a little loving thing,—sick ones crawling off alone like sick animals, persisting in being alone, bearing everything alone. But I won't let them; I will insist on forcing my way into their rooms. I would go and sit with Jane, and pet her and hold her hand and bathe her head, though I knew it made her horridly uncomfortable at first; but I thought she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian way, when she was sick. I will kiss her, too, sometimes, though she takes it just like a cat that isn't used to being stroked, and calls me a silly girl; but I know she is getting to like it. What is the use of people's loving each other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way? If one of them were dangerously ill now, or met with any serious accident, I know there would be no end to what the others would do for her; if one of them were to die, the others would be perfectly crushed: but it would all go inward,—drop silently down into that dark, cold, frozen well; they couldn't speak to each other; they couldn't comfort each other; they have lost the power of expression; they absolutely can't."

"Yes," said I, "they are like the fakirs who have held up an arm till it has become stiffened,—they cannot now change its position; like the poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become dumb through disuse of the organs of speech. Their education has been like those iron suits of armor into which little boys were put in the Middle Ages, solid, inflexible, put on in childhood, enlarged with every year's growth, till the warm human frame fitted the mould as if it had been melted and poured into it. A person educated in this way is hopelessly crippled, never will be what he might have been."

"Oh, don't say that, Chris; think of John; think how good he is."

"I do think how good he is,"—with indignation,—"and how few know it, too. I think, that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, the utmost appreciation of human friendship, he has passed in the world for a cold, proud, selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive nature had not unlocked gates and opened doors, he would never have known the love of woman: and now he is but half disenchanted; he every day tends to go back to stone."

"But I sha'n't let him; oh, indeed, I know the danger! I shall bring him out. I shall work on them all. I know they are beginning to love me a good deal: in the first place, because I belong to John, and everything belonging to him is perfect; and in the second place,"——

"In the second place, because they expect to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff and shrouded as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck: don't you remember him?"

"Yes, poor fellow! how he would stay out, and swim round and round, while the pond kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming-place grew smaller and smaller every day; but he was such a plucky little fellow that"——

"That at last we found him one morning frozen tight in, and he has limped ever since on his poor feet."

"Oh, but I won't freeze in," she said, laughing.

"Take care, Emmy! You are sensitive, approbative, delicately organized; your whole nature inclines you to give way and yield to the nature of those around you. One little lone duck such as you, however warm-blooded, light-hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freezing. While you have any influence, you must use it all to get John away from these surroundings, where you can have him to yourself."

"Oh, you know we are building our house; we shall go to housekeeping soon."

"Where? Close by, under the very guns of this fortress, where all your housekeeping, all your little management, will be subject to daily inspection."

"But mamma, never interferes, never advises,—unless I ask advice."

"No, but she influences; she lives, she looks, she is there; and while she is there, and while your home is within a stone's throw, the old spell will be on your husband, on your children, if you have any; you will feel it in the air; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will rule your house, it will bring up your children."

"Oh, no! never! never! I never could! I never will! If God should give me a dear little child, I will not let it grow up in these hateful ways!"

"Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, undefined, but real friction of your life-power, from the silent grating of your wishes and feelings on the cold, positive millstone of their opinion; it will be a life-battle with a quiet, invisible, pervading spirit, who will never show himself in fair fight, but who will be around you in the very air you breathe, at your pillow when you lie down and when you rise. There is so much in these friends of yours noble, wise, severely good,—their aims are so high, their efficiency so great, their virtues so many,—that they will act upon you with the force of a conscience, subduing, drawing, insensibly constraining you into their moulds. They have stronger wills, stronger natures than yours; and between the two forces of your own nature and theirs you will be always oscillating, so that you will never show what you can do, working either in your own way or yet in theirs: your life will be a failure."

"Oh, Chris, why do you discourage me?"

"I am trying tonic treatment, Emily; I am showing you a real danger; I am rousing you to flee from it. John is making money fast; there is no reason why he should always remain buried in this town. Use your influence as they do,—daily, hourly, constantly,—to predispose him to take you to another sphere. Do not always shrink and yield; do not conceal and assimilate and endeavor to persuade him and yourself that you are happy; do not put the very best face to him on it all; do not tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his habitual, cold, inexpressive manner; and don't lay aside your own little impulsive, outspoken ways. Respect your own nature, and assert it; woo him, argue with him; use all a woman's weapons to keep him from falling back into the old Castle Doubting where he lived till you let him out. Dispute your mother's hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for granted without daily proof between lovers; cry down latent caloric in the market; insist that the mere fact of being a wife is not enough,—that the words spoken once, years ago, are not enough,—that love needs new leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-trees, and new branches to grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the root to cover the ground.

"Oh, but I have heard that here is no surer way to lose love than to be exacting, and that it never comes for a woman's reproaches."

"All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper,—you could not use any of these forces, if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred,—that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. Thoughtless, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sacrifice, such as many women long to bestow on husband and children, soil and lower the very objects of their love. You may grow saintly by self-sacrifice; but do your husband and children grow saintly by accepting it without return? I have seen a verse which says,—

'They who kneel at woman's shrine Breathe on it as they bow.'

Is not this true of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend. Any good man soon learns to discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman's love to his soul, her concern for his honor, her anxiety for his moral development, and the pettish cry which comes from her own personal wants. It will be your own fault, if, for lack of anything you can do, your husband relapses into these cold, undemonstrative habits which have robbed his life of so much beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren ways of living are as unchristian as they are disagreeable; and you, as a good Christian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's banner, must make headway against this sort of family Antichrist, though it comes with a show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. Remember, dear, that the Master's family had its outward tokens of love as well as its inward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom; and the traitor could not have had a sign for his treachery, had there not been a daily kiss at meeting and parting with His children."

"I am glad you have said all this," said Emily, "because now I feel stronger for it. It does not now seem so selfish for me to want what it is better for John to give. Yes, I must seek what will be best for him."

And so the little one, put on the track of self-sacrifice, began to see her way clearer, as many little women of her sort do. Make them look on self-assertion as one form of martyrdom, and they will come into it.

But, for all my eloquence on this evening, the house was built in the self-same spot as projected; and the family life went on, under the shadow of Judge Evan's elms, much as if I had not spoken. Emmy became mother of two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and fainter; while with her physical decay came increasing need of the rule in the household of mamma and sisters, who took her up energetically on eagles' wings, and kept her house, and managed her children: for what can be done when a woman hovers half her time between life and death?

At last I spoke out to John, that the climate and atmosphere were too severe for her who had become so dear to him,—to them all; and then they consented that the change much talked of and urged, but always opposed by the parents, should be made.

John bought a pretty cottage in our neighborhood, and brought his wife and boys; and the effect of change of moral atmosphere verified all my predictions. In a year we had our own blooming, joyous, impulsive little Emily once more,—full of life, full of cheer, full of energy,—looking to the ways of her household,—the merry companion of her growing boys,—the blithe empress over her husband, who took to her genial sway as in the old happy days of courtship. The nightmare was past, and John was as joyous as any of us in his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned right side out for life; and we all admired the pattern. And that is the end of my story.

And now for the moral,—and that is, that life consists of two parts,—Expression and Repression,—each of which has its solemn duties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs the duty of expression: to anger, envy, malice, revenge, and all uncharitableness belongs the duty of repression.

Some very religious and moral people err by applying repression to both classes alike. They repress equally the expression of love and of hatred, of pity and of anger. Such forget one great law, as true in the moral world as in the physical,—that repression lessens and deadens. Twice or thrice mowing will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds; the roots die for want of expression. A compress on a limb will stop its growing; the surgeon knows this, and puts a tight bandage around a tumor; but what if we put a tight bandage about the heart and lungs, as some young ladies of my acquaintance do,—or bandage the feet, as they do in China? And what if we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap love in grave-clothes?

But again there are others, and their number is legion,—perhaps you and I, reader, may know something of it in ourselves,—who have an instinctive habit of repression in regard to all that is noblest and highest, within them, which they do not feel in their lower and more unworthy nature.

It comes far easier to scold our friend in an angry moment than to say how much we love, honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force; love is shamefaced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the door-latch.

How much freer utterance among many good Christians have anger, contempt, and censoriousness, than tenderness and love! I hate is said loud and with all our force. I love is said with a hesitating voice and blushing cheek.

In an angry mood we do an injury to a loving heart with good, strong, free emphasis; but we stammer and hang back when our diviner nature tells us to confess and ask pardon. Even when our heart is broken with repentance, we haggle and linger long before we can

"Throw away the worser part of it."

How many live a stingy and niggardly life in regard to their richest inward treasures! They live with those they love dearly, whom a few more words and deeds expressive of this love would make so much happier, richer, and better; and they cannot, will not, turn the key and give it out. People who in their very souls really do love, esteem, reverence, almost worship each other, live a barren, chilly life side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting their love go by as a matter of course, a last year's growth, with no present buds and blossoms.

Are there not sons and daughters who have parents living with them as angels unawares,—husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in whom the material for a beautiful life lies locked away in unfruitful silence,—who give time to everything but the cultivation and expression of mutual love?

The time is coming, they think in some far future when they shall find leisure to enjoy each other, to stop and rest side by side, to discover to each other these hidden treasures which lie idle and unused.

Alas! time flies and death steals on, and we reiterate the complaint of one in Scripture,—"It came to pass, while thy servant was busy hither and thither, the man was gone."

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. "She never knew how I loved her." "He never knew what he was to me." "I always meant to make more of our friendship." "I did not know what he was to me till he was gone." Such words are the poisoned arrows which cruel Death shoots backward at us from the door of the sepulchre.

How much more we might make of our family life, of our friendships, if every secret thought of love blossomed into a deed! We are not now speaking merely of personal caresses. These may or may not be the best language of affection. Many are endowed with a delicacy, a fastidiousness of physical organization, which shrinks away from too much of these, repelled and overpowered. But there are words and looks and little observances, thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions, which speak of love, which make it manifest, and there is scarce a family that might not be richer in heart-wealth for more of them.

It is a mistake to suppose that relations must of course love each other because they are relations. Love must be cultivated, and can be increased by judicious culture, as wild fruits may double their bearing under the hand of a gardener; and love can dwindle and die out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted in poor soil dwindle and grow single.

Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature prevent this easy faculty and flow of expression which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian or the French life: the dread of flattery, and a constitutional shyness.

"I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I admired her, the other day," says Miss X.

"And why in the world didn't you tell her?"

"Oh, it would seem like flattery, you know."

Now what is flattery?

Flattery is insincere praise given from interested motives, not the sincere utterance to a friend of what we deem good and lovely in him.

And so, for fear of flattering, these dreadfully sincere people go on side by side with those they love and admire, giving them all the time the impression of utter indifference. Parents are so afraid of exciting pride and vanity in their children by the expression of their love and approbation, that a child sometimes goes sad and discouraged by their side, and learns with surprise, in some chance way, that they are proud and fond of him. There are times when the open expression of a father's love would be worth more than church or sermon to a boy; and his father cannot utter it, will not show it.

The other thing that represses the utterances of love is the characteristic shyness of the Anglo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race born of two demonstrative, outspoken nations—the German and the French—has an habitual reserve that is like neither. There is a powerlessness of utterance in our blood that we should fight against, and struggle outward towards expression. We can educate ourselves to it, if we know and feel the necessity; we can make it a Christian duty, not only to love, but to be loving,—not only to be true friends, but to show ourselves friendly. We can make ourselves say the kind things that rise in our hearts and tremble back on our lips,—do the gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do and shrink back from; and, little by little, it will grow easier,—the love spoken, will bring back the answer of love,—the kind deed will bring back a kind deed in return,—till the hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm airs and echoing bird-voices answering back and forth with a constant melody of love.



MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Dear Sir,—Your letter come to han', Requestin' me to please be funny; But I a'n't made upon a plan Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey: Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer, Odd fancies come afore I call 'em; An' then agin, for half a year, No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn.

You 're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute, Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish, An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit, I 'd take an' citify my English. I ken write long-tailed, ef I please,— But when I 'm jokin', no, I thankee; Then, 'fore I know it, my idees Run helter-skelter into Yankee.

Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, I tell ye wut, I ha'n't ben foolin'; The parson's books, life, death, an' time Hev took some trouble with my schoolin'; Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman; Why, th' a'n't a bird upon the tree But half forgives my bein' human.

An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, While book-froth seems to whet, your hunger, For puttin' in a downright lick 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can match it, An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hatchet.

But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all, For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; Idees you hev to shove an' haul Like a druv pig a'n't wuth a mullein; Live thoughts a'n't sent for; thru all rifts O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards, Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts Feel thet the airth is wheelin' sunwards.

Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick Ez office-seekers arter 'lection, An' into ary place 'ould stick Without no bother nor objection; But sence the war my thoughts hang back Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em, An' substitutes,—wal, they don't lack, But then they 'll slope afore you 've mist 'em.

Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz; I can't see wut there is to hinder, An' yit my brains 'jes' go buzz, buzz, Like bumblebees agin a winder; 'Fore these times come, in all airth's row, Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in, Where I could hide an' think,—but now It 's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'.

Where 's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crust white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.

I hev ben gladder o' sech things Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, They filled my heart with livin' springs, But now they seem to freeze 'em over; Sights innercent ez babes on knee, Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, Jes' coz they be so, seem to me To rile me more with thoughts o' battle.

In-doors an' out by spells I try; Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', But leaves my natur' stiff an' dry Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same, Calmer than clock-work, an' not carin', An' findin' nary thing to blame, Is wus than ef she took to swearin'.

Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant, But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n', With Grant or Sherman oilers present; The chimbleys shudder in the gale, Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin' Like a shot hawk, but all's ez stale To me ez so much sperit-rappin'.

Under the yaller-pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented,— While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, Further an' further South retreatin'.

Or up the slippery knob I strain An' see a hunderd hills like islan's Lift their blue woods in broken chain Out o' the sea o' snowy silence; The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin', Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth Of empty places set me thinkin'.

Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows, An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, An' into psalms or satires ran it; But he, nor all the rest thet once Started my blood to country-dances, Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce Thet ha'n't no use for dreams an' fancies.

Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet Thet follered once an' now are quiet,— White feet ez snowdrops innercent, Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.

Why, ha'n't I held 'em on my knee? Did n't I love to see 'em growin', Three likely lads ez wal could be, Handsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze Whose natur', jes' like their'n, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'.

Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On War's red techstone rang true metal, Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle? To him who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Tippin' with fire the bolt of men Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?

'T a'n't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' thet world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in!

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South, For all they sot among the scorners: I 'd sooner take my chance to stan' At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, Than at God's bar hol' up a han' Ez drippin' red ez your'n, Jeff Davis!

Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud, With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! Longin' for you, our sperits wilt Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water!

Come, while our country feels the lift Of a gret instinct shoutin' forwards, An' knows thet freedom a'n't a gift Thet tarries long in hans' o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men, A nation saved, a race delivered!



"IF MASSA PUT GUNS INTO OUR HAN'S."

The record of any one American who has grown up in the nurture of Abolitionism has but little value by itself considered; but as a representative experience, capable of explaining all enthusiasms for liberty which have created "fanatics" and martyrs in our time, let me recall how I myself came to hate Slavery.

The training began while I was a babe unborn. A few months before I saw the light, my father, mother, and sister were driven from their house in New York by a furious mob. When they came cautiously back, their home was quiet as a fortress the day after it has been blown up. The front-parlor was full of paving-stones; the carpets were cut to pieces; the pictures, the furniture, and the chandelier lay in one common wreck; and the walls were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street, saw a bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a home or ornament it.

Among the earliest stories which were told me in the nursery, I recollect the martyrdom of Nat Turner,—how Lovejoy, by night, but in light, was sent quite beyond the reach of human pelting,—and all the things which Toussaint did, with no white man, but with the whitest spirit of all, to help him. As to minor sufferers for the cause of Freedom, I should know that we must have entertained Abolitionists at our house largely, since even at this day I find it hard to rid myself of an instinctive impression that the common way of testifying disapprobation of a lecturer in a small country-town is to bombard him with obsolete eggs, carried by the audience for that purpose. I saw many at my father's table who had enjoyed the honors of that ovation.

I was four years old when I learned that my father combined the two functions of preaching in a New England college town and ticket-agency on the Underground Railroad. Four years old has a sort of literal mindedness about it. Most little boys that I knew had an idea that professors of religion and professors in college were the same, and that a real Christian always had to wear black and speak Greek. So I could be pardoned for going down cellar and watching behind old hogsheads by the hour to see where the cars came in.

A year after that I casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe. His name was Isidore Smith; so, to protect him from Smith, my father, being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say that his name was John Peterson. I held the blue bowl which served for font. To this day I feel a sort of semi-accountability for John Peterson. I have asked after him every time I have crossed the Suspension Bridge since I grew up. In holding that baptismal bowl I suppose I am, in a sense, his godfather. Half a godfather is better than none, and in spite of my size I was a very earnest one.

There are few godchildren for whom I should have had to renounce fewer sins than for thee, brave John Peterson!

John Peterson had been baptized before. No sprinkling that, but an immersion in hell! He had to strip to show it to us. All down his back were welts in which my father might lay his finger; and one gash healed with a scar into which I could put my small, boyish fist. The former were made by the whip and branding-irons of a Virginia planter,—the latter by the teeth of his bloodhounds. When I saw that black back, I cried; and my father might have chosen the place to baptize in, even as John Baptist did AEnon, "because there was much water there."

John stayed with us three or four weeks and then got moody. Nobody in the town twitted him as a runaway. He was inexhaustibly strong in health, and never tired of doing us service as gardener, porter, errand-boy, and, on occasion, cook. In few places could his hard-won freedom be less imperilled than with us. At last the secret of his melancholy came out. He burst into tears, one morning, as he stood with the fresh-polished boots at the door of my father's study, and sobbed,—

"Massa, I's got to go an' fetch dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey, 'r I's be done dead afore de yeah's out!"

As always, a woman in the case!

Had it been his own case, I think I know my father well enough to believe that he would have started directly South for "dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey," though he had to face a frowning world. But being John's counsellor, his role was to counsel moderation, and his duty to put before him the immense improbability of his ever making a second passage of the Red Sea, if he now returned. If he were caught and whipped to death, of what benefit could he be to his wife and child? Why not stay North and buy them?