Etext of A Selection of Short Stories of Edward Everett Hale
by Edward Everett Hale

The Last of the Florida
From the Ingram Papers

The Florida, Anglo-Rebel pirate, after inflicting horrible injuries
on the commerce of America and the good name of England, was
cut out by Captain Collins, from the Bay of Bahia, by one of those
fortunate mistakes in international law which endear brave men to
the nations in whose interest they are committed. When she
arrived here the government was obliged to disavow the act. The
question then was, as we had her by mistake, what we should do
with her. At that moment the National Sailors  Fair was in full
blast at Boston, and I offered my suggestion in answer in the
following article, which was published 19 November 1864, in the
Boatswain's Whistle, a little paper issued at the fair.

The government did not take the suggestion. Very unfortunately,
before the Florida was got ready for sea, she was accidentally sunk
in a collision with a tug off Fort Monroe, and the heirs of the
Confederate government or the English bond-holders must look
there for her, if the Brazilian government will give them
permission.

For the benefit of the New York Observer I will state that a
despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200
times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before it
started. It is only a joke which suggests it.

SPECIAL DISPATCH

LETTER FROM CAPTAIN INGRAM, IN COMMAND OF THE
FLORIDA. Received four years in advance of the mail by a
lightning express, which has gained that time by running round the
world 1,200 times in, a spiral direction westward on its way from
Brazil to our publication-office. Mrs Ingham's address not being
known, the letter is printed for her information. No. 29.

Babia, Brazil, 1 April 1868

MY DEAR WIFE-We are here at last, thank fortune; and I shall
surrender the old pirate today to the officers of government. We
have been saluted, are to be feted, and perhaps I shall be made a
Knight Commander of the Golden Goose. I never was so glad as
when I saw the lights on the San Esperitu headland, which makes
the south point of this Bahia or bay.

You will not have received my No. 28 from Loando, and may have
missed 26 and 24, which I gave to outward bound whalemen. I
always doubted whether you got 1, 7,9, and 11. And for me I have
no word of you since you waved your handkerchief from the
window in Springfield Street on the morning of the 1 June 1865,
nearly four years. My dear child, you will not know me.

Let me then repeat, very briefly, the outline of this strange cruise;
and when the letters come, you can fill in the blanks.

The government had determined that the Florida must be returned
to the neutral harbour whence she came. They had put her in
complete repair, and six months of diplomacy had made the proper
apologies to the Brazilian government. Meanwhile Collins, who
had captured her by mistake, had, by another mistake, been made
an admiral, and was commanding a squadron; and to ensure her
safe and respectful delivery, I, who had been waiting service, was
unshelved, and, as you know, bidden to take command.

She was in apple-pie order. The engines had been cleaned up; and
I thought we could make a quick thing of it. I was a little dashed
when I found the crew was small; but I have been glad enough
since that we had no more mouths. No one but myself knew our
destination. The men thought we were to take despatches to the
Gulf squadron.

You remember I had had only verbal orders to take command, and
after we got outside the bay I opened my sealed despatches. The
gist of them was in these words-'You will understand that the
honour of this government is pledged for the safe delivery of the
Florida to the government of Brazil. You will therefore hazard
nothing to gain speed. The quantity of your coal has been adjusted
with the view to give your vessel her best trim, and the supply is
not large. You will husband it with care-taking every precaution
to arrive in Bahia safely with your charge, in such time as your
best discretion may suggest to you.'

'Your best discretion  was underscored.

I called Prendergast, and showed him the letter. Then we called the
engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the
bunkers, but went and returned with his face white, through the
black grime, to report 'not four days  consumption'. By some
cursed accident, he said, the bunkers had been filled with barrels
of salt-pork and flour!

On this, I ordered a light and went below. There had been some
fatal misunderstanding somewhere. The vessel was fitted out as for
an arctic voyage. Everywhere hard-bread, flour, pork, beef,
vinegar, sauerkraut; but, clearly enough, not, at the very best, five
days of coal!

And I was to get to Brazil with this old pirate transformed into a
provision ship, 'at my best discretion'.

'Prendergast,  said I, 'we will take it easy. Were you ever in Bahia?' 

'Took flour there in '55, and lay waiting for india-rubber from July
to October. Lost six men by yellow-jack. 

Prendergast was from the merchant marine. I had known him since
we were children. 'Ethan',  said I, 'in my best discretion it would be
bad to arrive there before the end of October. Where would you
go?'

I cannot say he took the responsibility. He would not take it. You
know, my dear, of course, that it was I who suggested Upernavik.
From the days of the old marbled paper Northern Regions  
through the 'quarto Ross and Parry and Back and the nephew Ross
and Kane and McClure and McClintock, you know, my dear, what
my one passion has been-to see those floes and icebergs for
myself. Surely you forgive me, or at least excuse- me. Do not you?
Here was this fast steamer under me. I ought not to be in Bahia
before October 25. It was June 1. Of course we went to Upernavik.

I will not say I regret it now. Yet I will say that on that decision,
cautiously made, though it was 'on my discretion', all our
subsequent misfortunes hang. The Danes were kind to us-the
Governor especially, though I had to carry the poor fellow bad
news about the Duchies and the Danish war, which was all fresh
then. He got up a dance for us, I remember, and there I wrote No.1
to you. I could not of course help-when we left him-running her up
a few degrees to the north, just to see whether there is or is not that
passage between Igloolik and Prince Rupert's Headland (and by
the way there is). After we passed Igloolik, there was such
splendid weather, that I just used up a little coal to drive her along
the coast of King William's Land; and there, as we waited for a
little duck-shooting on the edge of a floe one day, as our luck
ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them
with hard-tack crumbs and whale oil. They fell to dancing, and we
to laughing- they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest
woman tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash
right on the little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened
binnacle and compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and
such a mess together as I remember now. We had to apologise; the
doctor set her head as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread
from the cabin, to console them, and got them off without a fight.
But the next morning when I cast off from the floe, it proved the
beggars had stolen the compass card, needle and all.

My dear Mary, there was not another bit of magnetised iron in the
ship. The govermnent had been very shy of providing instruments
of any kind for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off
two compasses only the day before for whalebone spears and skin
breeches, neither of which knew the north star from the ace of
spades. And this thing proved of more importance than you will
think, it really made me feel that the stuff in the books and the
sermons about the mariners  needle was not quite poetry.

As you shall see, if 1 ever get through. (Since I began, I have seen
the Consul-and heard the glorious news from home-and am to be
presented to the port authorities tomorrow.) It was the most open
summer, Mary, ever known there. If I had not had to be here in
October, I would have driven right through Lancaster Sound, by
Baring's Island, and come out into the Pacific, But here was the
honour of the country, and we merely stole back through the
Straits. It was well enough there-all daylight, you know. But after
we passed Cape Farewell, we worked her into such fogs, child, as
you never saw out of Hyde Park. Did not I long for that
compass-card! We sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed. For
thirty-seven days I did not get an observation, nor speak a ship!
October! It was October before we were warm. At noon we used to
sail where we thought it was lightest. At night I used to keep two
men up for a lookout, lash the wheel, and let her drift like a
Dutchman. One way as good as another. Mary, when I saw the sun
at last, enough to get any kind of observation, we were welinigh
three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of fogs to me!

Well, I set her south again, but how long can you know ifyou are
sailing south, in those places where the northeast winds and Scotch
mists come from. Thank Heaven, we got south, or we should have
frozen to death. We got into November, and we got into
December. We were as far south as 37 degrees 29minutes and
were in 31 degrees 17 minutes  west on New Year's Day 1866,
when the second officer wished me a happy new year,
congratulated me on the fine weather, said we should get a good
observation, and asked me for the new nautical almanac! You
know they are only calculated for five years. We had two
Greenwich ones on board, and they ran out 31 December 1865.
But the government had been as stingy in almanacs as in coal and
compasses. They did not mean to keep the Confederacy in
almanacs.

That was- the beginning of our troubles. I had to take the old
almanac, with Prendergast, and we figured like Cocker, and
always kept ahead with a month's tables. But somehow-I feel sure
we were right-but something was wrong; and after a few weeks the
lunars used to come out in the most beastly way, and we always
proved to be on the top of the Andes or in the Marquesas Islands,
or anywhere but in the Atlantic Ocean. Well then, by good luck,
we spoke to the Winged Batavian; could not speak a word of
Dutch, nor he a word of English; but he let Ethan copy his tables,
and so we ran for St Sacrament. I posted 8, 9, and so there; I gave
the Dutchman 7, which I hope you got, but fear.

Well, this story is running long; but at St Sacrament we started
again, but, as ill-luck would have it, without a clean bill of health.
At that time I could have run into Bahia with coal-of which I had
bought some-in a week. But there was fever on shore-and bad-and
I knew we must make pratique when we came into the outer
harbour here; so, rather than do that, we stretched down the coast,
and met that cyclone I wrote you about, and had to put into
Loando. Understand, this was the first time we went into Loando. I
have learned that wretched hole well enough since. And it was as
we were running out of Loando, that, in reversing the engine too
suddenly, lest we should smash up an old Portuguese woman s
bum-boat, that the slides or supports of the piston-rod just shot out
of the grooves they run in on the top, came cleverly down on the
outside of the carriage, gave that odious g-r-r-r, which I can hear
now, and then, dump-down came the whole weight of the
walking-beam, bent rod and carriages all into three figure 8s, and
there we were! I had as lief run the boat with a clothes-wringer as
with that engine, any day, from then to now.

Well, we tinkered, and the Portuguese dockyard people tinkered.
We took out this, and they took out that. It was growing sickly, and
I got frightened, and finally I shipped the propeller and took it on
board, and started under such canvas as we had left-not much after
the cyclone-for the North and the South together had rather rotted
the original duck.

Then-as I wrote you in No.11  it was too late to get to Bahia before
that summer's sickly season, and I stretched off to cooler regions
again, 'in my best discretion'. That was the time when we had the
fever so horribly on board; and but for Wilder the surgeon, and the
Faildand Islands, we should be dead, every man of us, now. But we
touched in Queen's Bay just in time. The Governor (who is his
own only subject) was very cordial and jolly and kind. We all went
ashore, and pitched tents, and ate ducks and penguins till the men
grew strong. I scraped her, nearly down to the bends, for the grass
floated by our side like a mermaid's hair as we sailed, and the
once
swift Florida would not make four knots an hour on the wind; and
this was the ship I was to get into Bahia in good order, at my best
discretion!

Meanwhile none of these people had any news from America. The
last paper at the Falkiand Islands was the London Times of 1864,
abusing the Yankees. As for the Portuguese, they were like the
people Logan saw at Vicksburg. 'They don t know anything good! 
said he; 'they don t know anything at all!'  It was really more for
news than for water I put into Santa Lucia-and a pretty mess I
made of it there. We looked so like pirates (as at bottom the old
tub is), that they took all of us who landed to the guard-house.
None of us could speak Santa Lucia, whatever that tongue may be,
nor understand it. And it was not till Ethan fired a shell from the
ioo-pound Parrott over the town that they let us go. I hope the dogs
sent you my letters. I suppose there was another infringement of
neutrality. But if the Brazilian government sends this ship to Santa
Lucia, I shall not command her, that's all!

Well! what happened at Loando the second time, Valencia, and
Puntos Pimos, and Nueva Salamanca, and Loando this last time,
you know and will know, and why we loitered so. At last, thank
fortune, here we are. Actually, Mary, this ship logged on the
average only thirty-two knots a day for the last week before we got
her into port.

Now think of the ingratitude of men! I have brought her in here,
'according to my best discretion', and do you believe, these
hidalgos, or dons, or senores, or whatever they are, had forgotten
she existed. And when I showed them to her, they said in good
Portugal that I was a liar. Fortunately the Consul is our old friend
Kingsley. He was delighted to see me; thought I was at the bottom
of the sea. From him we learned that the Confederacy was blown
sky-high long ago. And from all I can learn, I may have the Florida
back again for my own private yacht or peculium, unless she goes
to Santa Lucia.

Not I, my friends! Scrape her, and mend her, and give her to the
marines-and tell them her story; but do not entrust her again to
my own Polly's own.

Frederic Ingham

A Piece of Possible History

This essay was first published in the Monthly Religious Magazine,
Boston, for October 1851. One or another professor of chronology
has since taken pains to tell me that it is impossible. But until they
satisfy themselves whether Homer ever lived at all, I shall hold to
the note which I wrote to Miss Dryasdust's cousin, which I printed
originally at the end of the article, and which will be found there in
this collection. The difficulties in the geography are perhaps worse
than those of chronology.

A summer bivouac had collected together a little troop of soldiers
from Joppa, under the shelter of a grove, where they had spread
their sheepskins, tethered their horses, and pitched a single tent.
With the carelessness of soldiers, they were chatting away the time
till sleep might come, and help them to tomorrow with its chances;
perhaps of fight, perhaps of another day of this camp indolence.
Below the garden slope where they were lounging, the rapid
torrent of Kishon ran brawling along. A full moon was rising
above the rough edge of the Eastern hills, and the whole scene was
alive with the loveliness of an Eastern landscape.

As they talked together, the strains of a harp came borne down the
stream by the wind, mingling with the rippling of the brook.

'The boys were right,  said the captain of the little company. 'They
asked leave to go up the stream to spend their evening with the
Cannel-men; and said that they had there a harper, who would sing
and play for them. 

'Singing at night, and fighting in the morning! It is the true
soldier's life,  said another.

'Who have they there?  asked a third.

'One of those Zikiag-men,  replied the chief. 'He came into camp a
few days ago, seems to be an old favourite of the king's, and is
posted with his men, by the old tomb on the edge of the hill. If you
cross the brook, he is not far from the Cannel post and some of his
young men have made acquaintance there. 

'One is not a soldier for nothing. If we make enemies at sight, we
make friends at sight too. 

'Echish here says that the harper is a Jew.' 

'What!- a deserter? 

'I do not know that; that is the king's lookout. Their company came
up a week ago, were reviewed the day I was on guard at the
outposts, and they had this post I tell you of assigned to them. So
the king is satisfied; and, if he is, I am. 

'Jew or Gentile, Jehovah's man or Dagon's man,  said one of the
younger soldiers, with a half-irreverent tone, 'I wish we had him
here to sing to us.' 

'And to keep us awake,' yawned another.

'Or to keep us from thinking of tomorrow,' said a third.

'Can nobody sing here, or play, or tell an old-tune story?'

There was nobody. The only two soldiers of the post, who affected
musical skill, were the two who had gone up to the Carmelites' 
bivouac; and the little company of Joppa -  catching louder notes
and louder, as the bard's inspiration carried him farther and farther
away - crept as far up the stream as the limits of their station
would permit; and lay, without noise, to catch, as they best could,
the rich tones of the music as it swept down the valley.

Soothed by the sound, and by the moonlight, and by the summer
breeze, they were just in mood to welcome the first interruption
which broke the quiet of the night. It was the approach of one of
their company, who had been detached to Accho a day or two
before; and who came hurrying in to announce the speedy arrival
of companions, for whom he bespoke a welcome. Just as they were
to leave Accho, he said, that day, on their return to camp, an Ionian
trading-vessel had entered port. He and his fellow-soldiers had
waited to help her moor, and had been chatting with her seamen.
They had told them of the chance of battle to which they were
returning; and two or three of the younger Ionians, enchanted at
the relief from the sea's imprisonment, had begged them to let
them volunteer in company with them. These men had come up
into the country with the soldiers, therefore; and he who had
broken the silence of the listeners to the distant serenade had
hurried on to tell his comrades that such visitors were on their
way.

They soon appeared on foot, but hardly burdened by the light
packs they bore.

A soldier's welcome soon made the Ionian sailors as much at
home with the men of the bivouac, as they had been through the
day with the detachment from the sea-board. A few minutes were
enough to draw, out sheepskins for them to lie upon, a skin of wine
for their thirst, a bunch of raisins and some oat-cakes for their
hunger; a few minutes more had told the news which each party
asked from the other; and then these sons of the sea and these
war-bronzed Philistine's were as much at ease with each other as if
they had served under the same sky for years.

'We were listening to music,' said the old chief, 'when you came
up. Some of our young men have gone up, indeed, to the picket
yonder, to hear the harper sing, whose voice you catch sometimes,
when we are not speaking.' 

'You find the Muses in the midst of arms, then,  said one of the
young Ionians.

'Muses?  said the old Philistine, laughing. 'That sounds like you
Greeks. Ah! sir, in our rocks here we have few enough Muses, but
those who carry these lances, or teach us how to trade with the
islands for tin.'

'That's not quite fair,' cried another. 'The youngsters who are gone
sing well; and one of them has a harp I should be glad you should
see. He made it himself from a gnarled olive-root.  And he turned
to look for it.

'You ll not find it in the tent: the boy took it with him. They hoped
the Zildag minstrel might ask them to sing, I suppose.' 

'A harp of olive-wood,' said the lonian, 'seems Muse-born and
Pallas-blessed.' 

And, as he spoke, one of the new-corners of the Philistines leaned
over, and whispered to the chief-'He is a bard himself, and we
made him promise to sing to us. I brought his harp with me that he
might cheer up our bivouac. Pray, do you ask him.'

The old chief needed no persuasion; and the eyes of the whole
force brightened as they found they had a minstrel 'of their own 
now, when the old man pressed the young Ionian courteously to let
them hear him-'I told you, sir, that we had no Muses of our own;
but we welcome all the more those who come to us from
overseas.' 

Homer smiled; for it was Homer whom he spoke to -  Homer still
in the freshness of his unblinded youth. He took the harp which the
young Philistine handed to him, thrummed upon its chords, and as
he tuned them said-'I have no harp of olive-wood; we cut this out,
it was years ago, from an old oleander in the marshes behind
Colophon. What will you hear, gentlemen?'

'The poet chooses for himself,'  said the courtly old captain.

'Let me sing you, then, of the Olive Harp's and he struck the
chords in a gentle, quieting harmony, which attuned itself to his
own spirit, pleased as he was to find music and harmony and the
olive of peace in the midst of the rough bivouac, where he had
come up to look for war. But he was destined to be disappointed.
Just as his prelude closed, one of the young soldiers turned upon
his elbow, and whispered contemptuously to his neighbour -
'Always olives, always peace: that's all your music's good for! '

The boy spoke too loud, and Homer caught the discontented tone
and words with an ear quicker than the speaker had given him
credit for. He ended the prelude with a sudden crash on the strings,
and said shortly, 'And what is better to sing of than the olive?'

The more courteous Philistines looked sternly on the young
soldier; but he had gone too far to be frightened, and he flashed
back-'War is better, My broadsword is better. If I could sing, I
would sing to your Ares; we call him Mars!' 

Homer smiled gravely. 'Let it be so,  said he; and, in a lower tone,
to the captain, who was troubled at the breach of courtesy, he
added, 'Let the boy see what war and Mars are for.' 

He struck another prelude and began. Then was it that Homer
composed his 'Hymn to Mars . In wild measure, and impetuous, he
swept along through the list of Mars's titles and attributes; then his
key changed, and his hearers listened more intently, more
solemnly, as in a graver strain, with slower music, and an almost
awed dignity of voice, the bard went on -

'Helper of mortals, hear!
As thy fires give
The present boldnesses that strive
In youth for honour;

So would I likewise wish to have the power
To keep off from my head thy bitter hour,
And quench the false fire of my soul's low kind,
By the fit ruling of my highest mind!
Control that sting of wealth
That stirs me on still to the horrid scath
Of hideous battle!

Do thou, O ever blessed! give me still
Presence of mind to put in act my will,
Whate er the occasion be;
And so to live, unforced by any fear,
Beneath those laws of peace, that never are

Affected with pollutions popular Of unjust injury,
As to bear safe the burden of hard fates,
Of foes inflexive, and inhuman hates! 

The tones died away; the company was hushed for a moment; and
the old chief then said gravely to his petulant follower, 'That is
what men fight for, boy.' But the boy did not need the counsel.
Homer's manner, his voice, the music itself, the spirit of the song,
as much as the words, had overcome him; and the boasting soldier
was covering his tears with his hands.

Homer felt at once (the prince of gentlemen he) that the little
outbreak, and the rebuke of it, had jarred the ease of their
unexpected meeting. How blessed is the presence of mind with
which the musician of real genius passes from song to song, 'what
e er the occasion be!  With the ease of genius he changed the tone
of his melody again, and sang his own hymn, 'To Earth, the Mother
of all.'

The triumphant strain is one which harmonises with every
sentiment; and he commanded instantly the rapt attention of the
circle. So engrossed was he, that he did not seem to observe, as he
sang, an addition to their company of some soldiers from above in
the valley, just as he entered on the passage-'Happy, then, are they

Whom thou, O great in reverence!
Are bent to honour. They shall all things find
In all abundance! All their pastures yield
Herds in all plenty. All their rooffs are filled 
With rich possessions.
High happiness and wealth attend them, 
While, with laws well-ordered, they
Cities of happy households sway;
And their sons exult in the pleasure of youth,
And their daughters dance with the flower-decked girls,
Who play among the flowers of summer!
Such are the honours thy full hands divide;
Mother of Gods and starry Heaven's bride! 

A buzz of pleasure and a smile ran round the circle, in which the
new-comers joined. They were the soldiers who had been to hear
and join the music at the Carmel-men's post. The tones of Homer's
harp had tempted them to return; and they had brought with them
the Hebrew minstrel, to whom they had been listening. It was the
outlaw David, of Bethlehem Ephrata.

David had listened to Homer more intently than anyone; and, as
the pleased applause subsided, the eyes of the circle gathered upon
him, and the manner of all showed that they expected him, in
minstrel-fashion, to take up the same strain.

He accepted the implied invitation, played a short prelude, and
taking Homer's suggestion of topic, sang in parallel with it--

'I will sing a new song unto thee, O God!
Upon psaltery and harp will I sing praise to thee.
Thou art He that giveth salvation to kings,
That deivereth David, thy servant, from the sword.
Rid me and save me from those who speak vanity,
Whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood-
That our sons may be as plants in fresh youth;
That our daughters may be as corner-stones-
The polished stones of our palaces;
That our garners may be full with all manner of store;
That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in the
way;
That there may be no cry nor complaint in our streets
Happy is the people that is in such a case;
Yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord! 

The melody was triumphant, and the enthusiastic manner yet more
so. The Philistines listened delighted - too careless of religion,
they, indeed not to be catholic in presence of religious enthusiasm;
and Homer wore the exalted expression which his face seldom
wore. For the first time since his childhood, Homer felt that he was
not alone in the-world!

Who shall venture to tell what passed between the two minstrels,
when Homer, leaving his couch, crossed the circle at once, flung
himself on the ground by David's side, gave him his hand; when
they looked each other in the face, and sank down into the rapid
murmuring of talk, which constant gesture illustrated, but did not
fully explain to the rough men around them? They respected the
poets  colloquy for a while; but then, eager again to hear one harp
or the other, they persuaded one of the lonian sailors to ask Homer
again to sing to them.

It was hard to persuade Homer. He shook his head, and turned
back to the soldier-poet. 

'What should I sing?  he said.

They did not enter into his notion: hearers will not always. And so,
taking his question literally, they replied, 'Sing? Sing us of the
snowstorm, the storm of stones, of which you sang at noon. 

Poor Homer! It was easier to do it than to be pressed to do it; and
he struck his harp again-'It was as when, some wintry day, to men

Jove would, in might, his sharp artillery show,
He wills his winds to sleep, and over plain
And mountains pours, in countless flakes, his snow.
Deep it conceals the rocky cliffs and hills,
Then covers all the blooming meadows o er,
All the rich monuments of mortals  skill,
All ports and rocks that break the ocean-shore.
Rock, haven, plain, are buried by its fall;
But the near wave, unchanging, drinks it all.
So while these stony tempests veil the skies,
While this on Greeks, and that on Trojans flies,
The walls unchanged above the clamour rise. 

The men looked round upon David, whose expression, as he
returned the glance, showed that he had enjoyed the fragment as
well as they. But when they still looked expectant, he did not
decline the unspoken invitation; but, taking Homer's harp, sang, as
if the words were familiar to him-

'He giveth snow like wool;
He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes;
He casteth forth his ice like morsels;
Who can stand before his cold?
He sendeth forth his word, and melteth them;
He causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.'

'Always this "He," 'said one of the young soldiers to another. 

'Yes, he replied; 'and it was so in the beginning of the evening,
when we were above there. 

'There is a strange difference between the two men, though the one
plays as well as the other, and the Greek speaks with quite as little
foreign accent as the Jew, and their subjects are the same. 

'Yes,  said the young Philistine harper; 'if the Greek should sing
one of the Hebrew's songs, you would know he had borrowed it, in
a moment.'

'And so, if it were the other way.'

'Of course,  said their old captain, joining in this conversation.
'Homer, if you call him so, sings the thing made: David sings the
maker. Or, rather, Homer thinks of the thing made: David thinks of
the maker, whatever they sing. 

'I was going to say that Homer would sing of cities; and David, of
the life in them.' 

'It is not what they say so much, as the way they look at it. The
Greek sees the outside - the beauty of the thing; the Hebrew-'

'Hush! 

For David and his new friend had been talking too. Homer had told
him of the storm at sea they met a few days before; and David, I
think, had spoken of a mountain-tornado, as he met it years before.
In the excitement of his narrative he struck the harp, which was
still in his hand, and sang  

'Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken, 
Because He was wroth;
There went up a smoke out of his nostrils,
And fire out of his mouth devoured;
It burned with living coal.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down,
And darkness was under his feet;
He rode upon a cherub and did fly,
Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his resting-place,
His pavilions were dark waters and clouds of the skies;
At the brightness before him his clouds passed by, 
Hail-stones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
And the highest gave his voice;
Hail-stones and coals of fire.
Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them,
And he shot out his lightnings, and discomfited them. 
Then the channels of waters were seen,
And the foundations of the world were made known, 
At thy rebuke, O Lord!
At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. 
He sent from above, he took me,
He drew me out of many waters. 

'Mine were but a few verses,  said Homer. 'I am more than repaid
by yours. Imagine Neptune, our sea-god, looking on a battle-
 
There he sat high, retired from the seas;
There looked with pity on his Grecians beaten;
There burned with rage at the god-king who slew them.
Then he rushed forward from the rugged mountains, 
Quickly descending;
He bent the forests also as he came down,
And the high cliffs shook under his feet.
Three times he trod upon them,
And with his fourth step reached the home he sought for.

There was his palace, in the deep waters of the seas,
Shining with gold, and builded forever.
There he yoked him his swift-footed horses;
Their hoofs are brazen, and their manes are golden.
He binds them with golden thongs,
He seizes his golden goad, 
He mounts upon his chariot, and doth fly:
Yes! he drives them forth into the waves! 
And the whales rise under him from the depths,
For they know he is their king; 
And the glad sea is divided into parts, 
That his steeds may fly along quickly;
And his brazen axle passes dry between the waves, 
So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians. 

And the poets sank again into talk.

'You see it,' said the old Philistine. 'He paints the picture. David
sings the life of the picture.' 

'Yes: Homer sees what he sings; David feels his song. 

'Homer's is perfect in its description. 

'Yes; but for life, for the soul of the description, you need the
Hebrew.'

'Homer might be blind; and, with that fancy and word-painting
power of his, and his study of everything new, he would paint
pictures as he sang, though unseen.'

'Yes,  said another; 'but David-  ' And he paused.

'But David?  asked the chief.

'I was going to say that he might be blind, deaf, imprisoned, exiled,
sick, or all alone, and that yet he would never know he was alone;
feeling as he does as he must to sing so, of the presence of this
Lord of his!'

'He does not think of a snowflake, but as sent from him.'

'While the snowflake is reminding Homer of that hard, worrying,
slinging work of battle. He must have seen fight himself' 

They were hushed again. For, though they no longer dared ask the
poets to sing to them-so engrossed were they in each other s
society-the soldiers were hardly losers from this modest courtesy.
For the poets were constantly arousing each other to strike a chord,
or to sing some snatch of remembered song. And so it was that
Homer, apropos of I do not know what, sang in a sad tone-'Like
leaves on trees the race of man is found,

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise.
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those have passed away. 

David waited for a change in the strain; but Homer stopped. The
young Hebrew asked him to go on; but Homer said that the
passage which followed was mere narrative, from a long narrative
poem. David looked surprised that his new friend had not pointed
a moral as he sang; and said simply, 'We sing that thus-As for
man, his days are as grass;

As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth;
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone,
And the place thereof shall know it no more. 
But the mercy of the Lord
Is from everlasting to everlasting
Of them that fear him;
And his righteousness
  -Unto children's children,--
  -To such as keep his covenant,
As remember his commandments to do them! 

cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands,
he sang, in clear tone-'Thou bid'st me birds obey-I scorn their
flight, If on the left they rise, or on the right! Heed them who may,
the will of Jove I own, Who mortals and immortals rules alone! 

'That is more in David's key,  said the young Philistine harper,
seeing that the poets had fallen to talk together again. 'But how
would it sound in one of the hymns on one of our feast-days?
"Who mortals and iminortals rules alone." 

'How, indeed?  cried one of his young companions. 'There would
be more sense in what the priests say and sing, if each were not
quarrelling for his own-Dagon against Astarte, and Astarte
against Dagon. 

The old captain bent over, that the poets might not hear him, and
whispered-'There it is that the Hebrews have so much more heart
than we in such things. Miserable fellows though they are, so many
of them, yet, when I have gone through their whole land with the
caravans, the chances have been that any serious-minded man
spoke of no God but this "He" of David s. 

'What is his name? 

'They do not know themselves, I believe. 

'Well, as I said an hour ago, God's man or Dagon's man-for those
are good names enough for me-I care little; but I should like to
sing as that young fellow does. 

'My boy,  said the old man, 'have not you heard him enough to see
that it is not he that sings, near as much as this love of his for a
Spirit he does not name? It is that spirited heart of his that sings. 

'You sing like him? Find his life, boy; and perhaps it may sing for
you. 

'We should be more manly men, if he sang to us every night. 

'Or if the other did,  said an lonian sailor.

'Yes,  said the chief. 'And yet, I think, if your countryman sang
every night to me, he would make me want the other. Whether
David's singing would send me to his, I do not feel sure. But how
silly to compare them! As well compare the temple in Accho with
the roar of a whirlwind -'

'Or the point of my lance with the flight of an eagle. The men are
in two worlds. 

'O, no! that is saying too much. You said that one could paint
pictures  

' Into which the other puts life. Yes, I did say so. We are fortunate
that we have them together. 

'For this man sings of men quite as well as the other does; and to
have the other sing of God  ,

'Why, it completes the song. Between them they bring the two
worlds together. 

'He bows the heavens, and comes down,  said the boy of the
olive-harp, trying to hum David's air.

'Let us ask them  '

And just then there rang along the valley the sound of a distant
conch shell. The soldiers groaned, roused up, and each looked for
his own side-arms and his own skin.

But the poets talked on unheeding.

The old chief knocked down a stack of lances; but the crash did
not rouse them. He was obliged himself to interrupt their eager
converse.

'I am sorry to break in; but the night-horn has sounded to rest, and
the guard will be round to inspect the posts. I am sorry to hurry you
away, sir,  he said to David.

David thanked him courteously.

'Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest,' said Homer, with a
smile.

'We will all meet tomorrow. And may tonight's dreams be good
omens! 

'If we dream at all,  said Homer again-'Without a sign his sword
the brave man draws,

And asks no omen but his country's cause. 

They were all standing together, as he made this careless reply to
the captain; and one of the young men drew him aside, and
whispered that David was in arms against his country.

Homer was troubled that he had spoken as he did. But the
youngJew looked little as if he needed sympathy. He saw the doubt
and regret which hung over their kindly faces; told them not to fear
for him; singing, as he bade them good-night, and with one of the
Carmel-men walked home to his own outpost-'The Lord who
delivered me from the paw of the lion,

The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the bear, He will
deliver me. 

And he smiled to think how his Carmelite companion would start,
if he knew when first he used those words.

So they parted, as men who should meet on the morrow.

But God disposes.

David had left tomorrow's dangers for tomorrow to care for. It
seemed to promise him that he must be in anus against Saul. But,
unlike us in our eagerness to anticipate our conflicts of duty, David
wafted.

And the Lord delivered him. While they were singing by the
brookside, the proud noblemen of the Philistine army had forced
an interview with their king; and, in true native Philistine
arrogance, insisted that 'this Hebrew  and his men should be sent
away.

With the light of morning the king sent for the minstrel, and
courteously dismissed him, because 'the princes of the Philistines
have said, "He shall not go up with us to the battle." 

So David marched his men to Ziklag.

And David and Homer never met on earth again.

Note-This will be a proper place to print the following note,
which I was obliged to write to a second cousin of Miss Thyasdust
after she bad read the MS of the article above-

Dear Madam - I thank you for your kind suggestion, in returning
my paper, that ft involves apiece of impossible history. You inform
me, that, 'according to the nomenclatured formulas and
homophonic analogies of Professor Gouraud, of never-to-be-
forgotten memory, "A needle is less useful for curing a deaf head,
than for putting ear-rings into a Miss's lily-ears"; and that this
shows that the second king of Judah, named David (or Deaf-head)
began to rein in 1055 BC, and died 1040 BC ; and further, that,
according to the same authority, 'Homer flourished when the
Greeks were fond of his poetry ; which, being interpreted, signals
that he flourished in 914 BC, and, consequentary, could have had
no more to do with David than to plant ivy over his grave, in some
of his voyages to Phcenicia.

- I thank you for the suggestion. I knew the unforgetting
professor; and Ido not doubt that he remembered David and
Homer as his near friends. But, of course, to such a memory, a
century or two might easily slip aside.

Now, did you look up Clement? And did you not forget the
Arundelian Marbles? For, if you will take the long estimates, you
will find that some folks think Homer lived as long ago as the year
1150, and some that it was as short ago as 850. And some set
David as long ago as 1170, and some bring him down to a hundred
and fifty years later. These are the long measures and the short
measures. So the long and short of it is, that you can keep the two
poets 320 years apart, while I have rather more than a century
which I can select any night of far a bivouac scene, in which to
bring them together. Believe me, my dear Miss D., always yours,
&c.

Confess that you forgot the Arundelian Marbles!

The South American Editor

I am tempted to include this little burlesque in this collection
simply in memory of the Boston Miscellany, the magazine in
which it was published which won for itself a brilliant reputation
in its short career. There was not a large staff of writers for the
Miscellany, but many of the names then unknown have since won
distinction. To quote them in the accidental order in which I find
them in the table of contents, where they are arranged by the
alphabetical order of the several papers, the Miscellany
contributors were Edward Everett, George Lunt, Nathan Hale, Jr.,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, N P.Willis, W. W. Story, 3. R. Lowell, C. N.
Emerson, Alexander H. Everett, Sarah P. Hale, W. A. Jones,
Cornelius Matthews, Mrs Kirkland, J. TV Ingraham, H. T.
Tuckerman, Evan A. Duyckinck, Francis A. Durivage, Mrs J.
Webb, Charles F. Powell, Charles W. Storey, Lucretia P. Hale,
Charles F. Briggs, William K Channing, Charles Lanman, G. H.
Hastings, and Elizabeth B. Barrett, now Mrs Browning, some of
whose earliest poems were published in this magazine. These are
all the contrthutors whose names appear, excepting the writers of a
few verses. They furnished nine tenths of the contents of the
magazine. The two Everetts, Lowell, William Story, and my
brother, who was the editor, were the principal contributors. And 1
am tempted to say that I think they all put some of their best work
upon this magazine.

The misfortune of the Miscellany, I suppose, was that its
publishers had no capital. They had to resort to the claptraps of
fashion-plates and other engravings in the hope of forcing an
immediate sale upon persons who, caring for fashion-plates, did
not care for the literary character of the enterprise. It gave a very
happy escape-pipe. however, for the high spirits of some of us who
had just left college, and, through my brother's kindness, I was
sometimes permitted so contribute to the journal. In memory of
those early days of authorship, I select 'The South American
Editor  to publish here. For the benefit of the New York Observer,
I will state that the story is not true. And lest any should complain
that it advocates elopements, I beg to observe, in the serious ness
of mature life, that the proposed elopement did not succeed, and
that the parties who proposed it are represented as having no
guardians or keepers but themselves. The article was first
published in 1842.

It is now more than six years since I received the following letter
from an old classmate of mine, Harry Barry, who had been
studying divinity, and was then a settled minister. It was an answer
to a communication I had sent him the week before.

Topsham, R.I., 22 January 1836

To say the truth, my dear George, your letter startled me a little.
To think that I, scarcely six months settled in the profession,
should be admitted so far into the romance of it as to unite forever
two  young runaways like yourself and Miss Julia What's-her-
name is at least curious. But, to give you your due, you have made
a strong case of it, and as Miss (what is her name, I have not yours
at hand) is not under any real guardianship, I do not see but I am
perfectly justified in complying with your rather odd request. You
see I make a conscientious matter of it.

Write me word when it shall be, and I will be sure to be ready.
Jane is of course in my counsels, and she will make your little wife
feel as much at home as in her father's parlour. Trust us for
secrecy.

I met her last week...

But the rest of the letter has nothing to do with the story.

The elopement alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so
high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly
necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her
grandfather, a pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure
affection she had long yielded an obedience which he would have
had no right to extort, and which he was sometimes disposed to
abuse. He had declared in the most ingenuous manner that she
should never marry with his consent any man of less fortune that
her own would be; and on his consent rested the prospect of her
inheriting his property.

Julia and I, however, care little for money now, we cared still less
then; and her own little property and my own salary made us
esteem ourselves entirely independent of the old gentleman and his
will.

His intention respecting the poor girl's marriage was thundered in
his ears at least once a week, so that we both knew that I had no
need to make court to him; indeed, I had never seen him, always
having met her in walking, or in the evening at party, spectacle,
concert, or lecture. He had lately been more domineering than
usual, and I had but little difficulty in persuading the dear girl to
let me write to Harry Barry, to make the arrangement to which he
assented in the letter which I have copied above. The reasoning
which I pressed upon her is obvious. We loved each other-the old
gentleman could not help that; and as he managed to make us very
uncomfortable in Boston, in the existing state of affairs, we
naturally came to the conclusion that the sooner we changed that
state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we supposed,
prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it would
result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of
maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's
part, we outvoted him.

I have said that I had no fortune to enable me to come near the old
gentleman's beau ideal of a grandson-in-law. I was then living on
my salary as a South American editor. Does the reader know what
that is? The South American editor of a newspaper has the
uncontrolled charge of its South American news. Read any
important commercial paper for a month, and at the end of it tell
me if you have any clear conception of the condition of the various
republics (!) of South America. If you have, it is because that
journal employs an individual for the sole purpose of setting them
in the clearest order before you, and that individual is its South
American editor. The general-news editor of the paper will keep
the run of all the details of all the histories of all the rest of the
world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he does, he fails.
It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons, that any
American news office which has a strong regard for the
consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall
employ some person competent to take the charge which I held in
the establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I
am speaking. Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its
'South American man ; this being my only employment, excepting
that by a special agreement, in consideration of an addition to my
salary, I was engaged to attend to the news from St Domingo,
Guatemala, and Mexico.*1

Monday afternoon, just a fortnight after I received Harry Barry's
letter, in taking my afternoon walk round the Common, I happened
to meet Julia. I always walked in the same direction when I was
alone. Julia always preferred to go the other way; it was the only
thing in which we differed. When we were together I always went
her way of course, and liked it best.

I had told her, long before, all about Harry's letter, and the dear
girl in this walk, after a little blushing and sighing, and half
faltering and half hesitating and feeling uncertain, yielded to my
last and wannest persuasions, and agreed to go to Mrs Pollexfen s
ball that evening, ready to leave it with me in my buggy sleigh, for
a three hours  ride to Topsham, where we both knew Harry would
be waiting for us. I do not know how she managed to get through
tea that evening with her lion of a grandfather, for she could not
then cover her tearful eyes with a veil as she did through the last
half of our walk together.

I know that I got through my tea and such like ordinary affairs by
skipping them. I made all my arrangements, bade Gage and
Streeter be ready with the sleigh at my lodgings (fortunately only
two doors from Mrs Pollexfen's) at half-past nine o clock, and was
the highest spirited of men when, on returning to those lodgings
myself at eight o clock, I found the following missives from the
Argus office, which had been accumulating through the afternoon.

No. 1

4 o clock, p.m.

Dear Sir-

The southern mail, just in, brings Buenos Aires papers
six days later, by the Medora, at Baltimore.

In haste, J.C.

(Mr C - was the gentleman who opened the newspapers, and
arranged the deaths and marriages; he always kindly sent for me
when I was out of the way.)

No. 1.

5 o clock, p.m.

Dear Sir-

The US ship Preble is in at Portsmouth; latest from Valparaiso.
The mail is not sorted.  -

Yours, J. D.

(Mr D  arranged the ship news for the Argus.)

No. 3.

6 o clock, p.m.

Dear Sir-
I boarded, this morning, off Cape Cod, the Blunderhead, from
Carthagena, and have a week's later papers.

Truly yours, T. E.

(Mr E  was the enterprising commodore of our news-boats.)

No.4.

6.15 o clock, p.m.

Dear Sir-

I have just opened accidentally the enclosed letter, from
our correspondent at Panama. You will see that it bears a New
Orleans post-mark. I hope it may prove exclusive. 

Yours, J.F. 

(Mr F - was general editor of the Argus.)


No. 5.

6.30 o clock, p.m.

Dear Sir-

A seaman, who appears to be an intelligent man, has arrived this
morning at New Bedford, and says he has later news of the
rebellion in Ecuador than any published. The Rosina (his vessel)
brought no papers. I bade him call at your room at eight o'clock,
which he promised to do. 

Truly yours, J. G.

(Mr G  was clerk in the Argus counting-room.)

No 6.

7.30 o dock, p.m.

Dear Sir-

The papers by the Ville de Lyon, from Havre, which I have just
received, mention the reported escape of M. Bonpland from
Paraguay, the presumed death of Dr Francia, the probable
overthrow of the government, the possible establishment of a
republic, and a great deal more than I understand in the least.

These papers had not come to hand when I wrote you this
afternoon. I have left them on your desk at the office.

In haste, J. F.

I was taken all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had
spent the afternoon in drilling Singleton, the kindest of friends, as
to what he should do, in any probable contingency of news of the
next forty-eight hours, for I did not intend to be absent on a
wedding tour even longer than that time; but I felt that Singleton
was entirely unequal to such a storm of intelligence as this; and, as
I hurried down to the office, my chief sensation was that of
gratitude that the cloud had broken before I was out of the way; for
I knew I could do a great deal in an hour, and I had faith that I
might slur over my digest as quickly as possible, and be at Mrs
Pollexfen's within the time arranged. 

I rushed into the office in that state of zeal in which a man may do
anything in almost no time. But first, I had to go into the
conversation-room, and get the oral news from my sailor; then Mr
H -, from one of the little news-boats, came to me in high glee,
with some Venezuela gazettes, which he had just extorted from a
skipper, who, with great plausibility, told him that he knew his
vessel had brought no news, for she never had before. (N.B. In this
instance she was the only vessel to sail, after a three months 
blockade.) And then I had handed to me by Mr J - one of the
commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which
had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang
to work-read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess
guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble,
make the only transcript I can give of the operations which
followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat
around me; but soon Mr C , having settled the deaths and
marriages, and the police and municipal reporters immediately
after him, screwed out their lamps and went home; then the editor
himself, then the legislative reporters, then the commercial editors,
then the ship-news conductor, and left me alone.

I envied them that they got through so much earlier than usual, but
scratched on, only interrupted by the compositors coming in for
the pages of my copy as I finished them; and finally, having made
my last translation from the last Boletin Ertraordinario, sprang up,
shouting, 'Now for Mrs P-'s,  and looked at my watch. It was
half-past one!*2 I thought of course it had stopped - no; and my
last manuscript page was numbered twenty-eight! Had I been
writing there five hours? Yes!

Reader, when you are an editor, with a continent's explosions to
describe, you will understand how one may be unconscious of the
passage of time.

I walked home, sad at heart. There was no light in all Mr
Wentworth's house; there was none in any of Mrs Pollexfen's
windows;+ and the last carriage of her last relation had left her
door. I stumbled upstairs in the dark, and threw myself on my bed.
What should I say, what could I say, to Julia? Thus pondering, I
fell asleep.

If I were-writing a novel, I should say that, at a late how the next
day, I listlessly drew aside the azure curtains of my couch, and
languidly rang a silver bell which stood on my dressing-table, and
received from a page dressed in an Oriental costume the notes and
letters which had been left for me since morning, and the
newspapers of the day.

I am not writing a novel.

The next morning, about ten o'clock, I arose and went down to
breakfast. As I sat at the littered table which everyone else had left,
dreading to attack my cold coffee and toast, I caught sight of the
morning papers, and received some little consolation from them.
There was the Argus with its three columns and a half of
'Important from South America', while none of the other papers
had a square of any intelligibility excepting what they had copied
from the Argus the day before. I felt a grim smile creeping over my
face as I observed this signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to
take a sip of the black broth as I glanced down my own article to
see if there were any glaring misprints in it. Before I took the
second sip, however, a loud peal at the door-bell announced a
stranger, and, immediately after, a note was brought in for me
which I knew was in Julia's handwriting.

DEAR GEORGE-

Don't be angry; it was not my fault, really it was not. Grandfather
came home just as I was leaving last night, and was so angry, and
said I should not go to the party, and I had to sit with him all the
evening. Do write to me or let me see you; do something  

What a load that note took off my mind! And yet, what must the
poor girl have suffered! Could the old man suspect? Singleton was
true to me as steel, I knew. He could not have whispered-nor
Barry; but that Jane, Barry's wife. O woman! woman! what
newsmongers they are! Here were Julia and I, made miserable for
life, perhaps, merely that Jane Barry might have a good story to
tell. What right had Barry to a wife? Not four years out of college,
and hardly settled in his parish. To think that I had been fool
enough to trust even him with the particulars of my all-important
secret! But here I was again interrupted, coffee-cup still full, toast
still untasted, by another missive.

Tuesday morning

SIR-

I wish to see you this morning. Will you call upon me, or
appoint a time and place where I may meet you? -

Yours, -JEDEDIAH WENTWORTH

'Tell Mr Wenrworth I will call at his house at eleven o clock. 

The cat was certainly out, Mrs Barry had told, or someone else
had, who I did not know and hardly cared. The scene was to come
now, and I was almost glad of it. Poor Julia! what a time she must
have had with the old bear! - -

At eleven o clock I was ushered into Mr Wentworth's sitting-room.
Julia was there, but before I had even spoken to her the old
gentleman came bustling across the room, with his 'Mr
Hackmatack, I suppose'; and then followed a formal introduction
between me and her, which both of us bore with the most
praiseworthy fortitude and composure, neither evincing, even by a
glance, that we had ever seen or heard of each other before. Here
was another weight off my mind and Julia's. I had wronged poor
Mrs Barry. The secret was not out - what could he want? It very
soon appeared.

After a minute's discussion of the weather, the snow, and the
thermometer, the old gentleman drew up his chair to mine, with 'I
think, sir, you are connected with the Argus office? 

'Yes, sir; I am its South American editor.  -

'Yes!  roared the old man, in a sudden rage. 'Sir, I wish South
America was sunk in the depths of the sea! 

'I am sure I do, sir,  replied I, glancing at Julia, who did not,
however, understand me. I had not fully passed out of my last
night's distress.

My sympathising zeal soothed the old gentleman a little, and he
said more coolly, in an undertone-'Well, Sir, you are well
informed, no doubt, tell me, in strict secrecy, sir, between you and
me, do you - do you place full credit - entire confidence in the
intelligence in this morning's paper? 

'Excuse me, sir; what paper do you allude to? Ah! the Argus, I see.
Certainly, sir; I have not the least doubt that it is perfectly correct. 

'No doubt, sir! Do you mean to insult me?  Julia, I told you so; he
says there is no doubt it is true. Tell me again there is some
mistake, will you?  The poor girl had been trying to soothe him
with the constant remark of uninformed people, that the
newspapers are always in the wrong. He turned from her, and rose
from his chair in a positive rage. She was half crying. I never saw
her more distressed. What did all this mean? Were one, two, or all
of us crazy?

It soon appeared. After pacing the length of the room once or
twice, Wentworth came up to me again, and, attempting to appear
cool, said between his closed lips - 'Do you say you have no doubt
that Rio Janeiro is strictly blockaded?' -

'Not the slightest in the world,  said I, trying to seem unconcerned.

'Not the slightest, sir? What are you so impudent and cool about it
for? Do you think you are talking of the opening of a rose-bud or
the death of a mosquito? Have you no sympathy with the
sufferings of a fellow-creature? Why, sir!  and the old man's teeth
chattered as he spoke, 'I have five cargoes of flour on their way to
Rio, and their captains will - Damn it, sir, I shall lose the whole
venture. 

The secret was out. The old fool had been sending flour to Rio,
-knowing as little of the state of affairs there as a child.

'And do you really mean, sir,  continued the old man, 'that there is
an embargo in force in Montevideo? 

'Certainly, sir; but I m very sorry for it.' 

'Sorry for it! Of course you are - and that all foreigners are sent out
of Buenos Aires? 

'Undoubtedly, sir. I wish-'

'Who does not wish so? Why, sir, my corresponding friends there
are half across the sea by this time. I wish Rosas was in  - and that
the Indians have risen near Maranham? 

'Undoubtedly, sir.'

'Undoubtedly! I tell you, sir, I have two vessels waiting for cargoes
of india-rubbers there, under a blunder-headed captain, who will
do nothing he has not been bidden to - obey his orders if he breaks
his owners. You smile, sir? Why, I should have made thirty
thousand dollars this winter, sir, by my india-rubbers, if we had not
had this devilish mild, open weather, you and Miss Julia there have
been praising so. But next winter must be a severe one, and with
those india-rubbers I should have made-But now those Indians  
pshaw! And a revolution in Chile? 

'Yes, sir.'

'No trade there! And in Venezuela?' 

'Yes, sir' 

'Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir! Sir, I am ruined. Say "Yes, sir,"
to that. I have thirteen vessels at this moment in the South
American trade, sir; say "Yes, sir," to that. Half of them will be
taken by the piratical scoundrels; say "Yes, sir," to that. Their
insurance will not cover them; say "Yes, sir," to that. The other
half will forfeit their cargoes, or sell them for next to nothing; say
"Yes, sir," to that. I tell you I am a ruined man, and I wish South
America, and your daily Argus, and you  '

Here the old gentleman's old-school breeding got the better of his
rage, and he sank down in his armchair, and, bursting into tears,
said-'Excuse me, sir - excuse me, sir - I am too warm.' 

We all sat for a few moments in silence, but then I took my share
of the conversation. I wish you could have seen the old man's face
light up little by little, as I showed him that to a person who
understood the politics and condition of the mercurial country with
which he had ignorantly attempted to trade, his condition was not
near so bad as he thought it; that though one port was blockaded,
another was opened; that though one revolution thwarted him, a
few weeks would show another which would favour him; that the
goods which, as he saw, would be worthless at the port to which he
had sent them, would be valuable elsewhere; that the vessels
which would fail in securing the cargoes he had ordered could
secure others; that the very revolutions and wars which troubled
him would require in some instances large government purchases,
perhaps large contracts for freight, possibly even for passage-his
vessels might be used for transports; that the very excitement of
some districts might be made to turn to our advantage; that, in
short, there were a thousand chances open to him which skilful
agents could readily improve. I reminded him that a quick run in a
clipper schooner could carry directions to half these skippers of
his, to whom, with an infatuation which I could not and cannot
conceive, he had left no discretion, and who indeed were to be
pardoned if they could use none, seeing the tumult as they did with
only half an eye. I talked to him for half an hour, and went into
detail to show that my plans were not impracticable. The old
gentleman grew brighter and brighter, and Julia, as I saw,
whenever I stole a glance across the room, felt happier and
happier. The poor girl had had a hard time since he had first heard
this news whispered the evening before.

His difficulties were not over, however; for when I talked to him
of the necessity of sending out one or two skilful agents
immediately to take the personal superintendence of his
complicated affairs, the old man sighed, and said he had no skilful
agents to send.

With his customary suspicion, he had no parmers, and had never
entrusted his clerks with any general insight into his business.
Besides, he considered them all, like his captains, blunder-headed
to the last degree. I believe it was an idea of Julia's, communicated
to me in an eager, entreating glance, which induced me to propose
myself as one of these confidential agents, and to be responsible
for the other. I thought, as I spoke, of Singleton, to whom I knew I
could explain my plans in full, and whose mercantile experience
would make him a valuable coadjutor. The old gentleman accepted
my offer eagerly. I told him-that twenty-four hours were all I
wanted to prepare myself. He immediately took measures for the
charter of two little clipper schooners which lay in port then; and
before two days were past, Singleton and I were on our voyage to
South America. Imagine, if you can, how these two days were
spent. Then, as now, I could prepare for any journey in twenty
minutes, and of course I had no little time at my disposal for last
words with Mr and-Miss Wentworth. How I won on the old
gentleman's heart in those two days! How he praised me to Julia,
and then, in as natural affection, how he praised her to me! And
how Julia and I smiled through our tears, when, in the last
goodbyes, he said he was too old to write or read any but business
letters, and charged me and her to keep up a close correspondence,
which on one side should tell all that I saw and did, and on the
other hand remind me of all at home.

I have neither time nor room to give the details of that South
American expedition. I have no right to. There were revolutions
accomplished in those days without any object in the world's eyes;
and, even in mine, only serving to sell certain cargoes of long
cloths and flour. The details of those outbreaks now told would
make some patriotic presidents tremble in their seats; and I have
no right to betray confidence at whatever rate I purchased it.
Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's were only obtaining the
best information and communicating the most speedy instructions
to Mr Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move from port to
port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none besides
us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I
travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first
white man who ever passed through the mountain path of
Xamaulipas, now so famous in all the Chilean picturesque annuals.
I was carrying directions for some vessels which had gone round
the Cape; and what a time Burrows and Wheatland and I had a
week after, when we rode into the public square of Valparaiso
shouting, 'Muera la Constitucion - Viva Libertad!  by our own
unassisted lungs actually raising a rebellion, and, which was of
more importance, a prohibition on foreign flour, while Bahamarra
and his army were within a hundred miles of us. How those vessels
came up the harbour, and how we unloaded them, knowing that at
best our revolution could only last five days! But as I said, I must
be careful, or I shall be telling other people's secrets.

The result of that expedition was that those thirteen vessels all
made - good outward voyages, and all but one or two eventually
made profitable home voyages.

When I returned home, the old gentleman received me with open
arms. I had rescued, as he said, a large share of that fortune which
he valued so highly. To say the truth, I felt and feel that he had
planned his voyages so blindly, that, without some wiser head than
his, they would never have resulted in anything. They were his last,
as they were almost his first, South American ventures. He
returned to his old course of more methodical trading for the few
remaining years of his life. They were, thank Heaven, the only
taste of mercantile business which I ever had. Living as I did, in
the very sunshine of Mr Wentworth's favour, I went through the
amusing farce of paying my addresses to Julia in approved form,
and in due time received the old gentleman's cordial assent to our
union, and his blessing upon it. In six months after my return, we
were married; the old man as happy as a king. He would have
preferred a little that the ceremony should have been performed
by Mr B , his friend and pastor, but readily assented to my wishes
to call upon a dear and early friend of my own. Harry Barry came
from Topsham and performed the ceremony, 'assisted by Revd Mr
B'.

G.H.

Argus Cottage, 1 April 1842

*1-I do not know that this explanation is at all clear. Let me,
as the mathematicians say, give an instance which will illustrate
the importance of this profession. It is now a few months since I
received the following note from a distinguished member of the
Cabinet-

Washington, January 1842

Dear Sir-We are in a little trouble about a little thing. There are
now in this city no less than three gentlemen bearing credentials to
government as Charges from the Republic of Oronoco. They are,
of course, accredited from three several home governments. The
President signified, when the first arrived, that he would receive
the Charg‚ from that government, on the and proximo, but none of
us know who the right Charg‚ is. The newspapers tell nothing
satisfactory about it. I suppose you know: can you write me word
before the and?

The gentlemen are: Dr Estremadura, accredited from the
'Constitutional Government' his credentials are dated the 2nd of
November; Don Paulo Vibeira, of the 'Friends of the People , 6th
of November; M. Antonio de Vesga, 'Constitution of 182 3',
October 27th. They attach great importance to our decision, each
having scrip to sell. In haste, truly yours.

To-this letter I returned the following reply  

Sir - Our latest dates from Oronoco are to the 13th ultimo. The
'Constitution of '23  was then in full power. If, however, the policy
of our government be to recognize the gentlemen whose principals
shall be in office on the 2nd proximo, it is a very different affair.

You may not be acquainted with the formulas for ascertaining the
duration of any given modern revolution. I now use the following,
which I find almost exactly correct.

Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles
from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given
Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in days.
This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the heat 
of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of the 
theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the 25th
of October last. If you will give the above formula into the hands 
of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show that that 
government will go out of power on the 1st of February, at 25 
minutes after 1 P.M. Your choice, on the and, must be therefore 
between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no
difficulty. Bobadil (Vibeira's principal) was on the 13th ultimo
confined under sentence of death, at such a distance from the
capital that he cannot possibly escape and get into power before
the end of February. The 'Friends of the People', in Oronoco, have
always moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less
than nineteen days' canvassing; that was in 1839. Generally they
are even longer. Of course, Estremadura will be your man.

Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

GEORGE HACKMATACK.

The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice.
My-information proved nearly correct, the only error being one of
seven minutes in the downfall of the 1823 Constitution. This arose
from my making  no allowance for difference of longitude
between Piaut, where  their govermnent was established, and
Opee, where it was crushed. The difference of time between those
places is six minutes and fifty-three seconds, as the reader may see
on a globe.

Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold
his scrip.

*2  Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that
half-past one was late in 1836. At that time the Great Western
Mail was due in Boston at 6 P.M., and there was no later news
except 'local', or an  occasional horse express.

+ The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when the
German was yet unknown. -

The Old And The New, Face to Face
A Thumb-nail. Sketch

This essay was published in Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as 'A
Thumb-nail Sketch', having received one often premiums which
Mr Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written
a few years earlier, some time before the studies of St Paul's life
by Conybeare and Howson, now so well known, were made public.
The chronology of my essay does not precisely agree with that of
these distinguished scholars. But I make no attempt now either to
recast the essay or to discuss the delicate and complicated
questions which belong to the chronology of Paul's life or to that
of Nero; for there is no question with regard to the leading facts.
At the end of twenty years I may again express the wish that some
master competent to the greatest themes might take the trial of
Paul as the subject of a picture.

In a Roman audience-chamber, the old civilisation and the new
civilisation brought out, at the very birth of the new, their chosen
champions.

In that little scene, as in one of Rembrandt's thumb-nail studies for
a great picture, the lights and shades are as distinct as they will
ever be in the largest scene of history. The champions were perfect
representatives of the parties. And any man, with the soul of a
man, looking on, could have prophesied the issue of the great
battle from the issue of that contest. -

The old civilisation of the Roman Empire, just at that time, had
reached a point which, in all those outward forms which strike the
eye, would regard our times as mean indeed. It had palaces of
marble, where even modern kings would build of brick with a
marble front to catch the eye; it counted its armies by thousands,
where we count ours by hundreds; it surmounted long colonnades
with its exquisite statues, for which modern labour digs deep in
mined cities, because it cannot equal them from its own genius; it
had roads, which are almost eternal, and which, for their purposes,
show a luxury of wealth and labour that our boasted locomotion
cannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enter
the palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses
which modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at
which modern times can only wonder. The outside of the ancient
civilisation is unequalled by the outside of ours, and for centuries
will be unequalled by it. We have not surpassed it there. And we
see how it attained this distinction, such as it was. It came by the
constant concentration of power. Power in few hands is the secret
of its display and glory. And thus that form of civilisation attained
its very climax in the moment of the greatest unity of the Roman
Empire. When the Empire nestled into rest, after the convulsions
in which it was born; when a generation had passed away of those
who had been Roman citizens; when a generation arose, which,
excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman
subjects-then the Empire was at its height of power, its
centralisation was complete, the system of its civilisation was at
the zenith of its success.

At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first grey
morning-light of the new civilisation.

At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber,
contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long
centuries.

There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact
representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with
another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.

Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best
illustrates the old civilisation owes to. it the most careful nurture.
From his childhood he has been its petted darling. Its principal is
concentration under one head. He is that head. When he is a child,
men know he will be emperor of the world. The wise men of the
world teach him; the poets of the world flatter him; the princes of
the world bow to him. He is trained in all elegant
accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful, luxurious
society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the face of
fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual countenance
of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine him clad
in splendour before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed in
jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an
expression of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those
exquisite licentious features, and you have before you the type of
Roman civilisation. It is the boy just budding into manhood,
whom later times will name as the lowest embodiment of
meanness and cruelty! You are looking upon Nero!

Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilisation, its
central power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this
sketch of ours is the exact climax of the moral results of the
ancient civilisation. We are to look at Nero just when he has
returned to Rome from a Southern journey.*1 That journey had
one object, which succeeded. To his after-life it gives one memory,
which never dies. He has travelled to his beautiful country palace,
that he might kill his mother!

We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was
Nero's mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has
all the beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is
the Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty - and of lust.
She is most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is
that beauty of feature in a state of whose matrons not one is
virtuous, of whose daughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of
sense alone, fit adornment of that external grandeur, of that old
society.

In the infancy of her son, this beautiful Agrippina consulted a
troop of fortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he
would live to be Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all
the ecstasy of a mother's pride fused so strangely with all the
excess of an ambitious woman's love of power, she cried in
answer, 'He may kill me, if only he rules Rome!' 

She spoke her own fate in these words.

Here is the account of it by Tacitus. Nero had made all the
preparations; had arranged a barge, that of a sudden its deck might
fall heavily upon those in the cabin, and crush them in an instant.
He meant thus to give to the murder which he planned the aspect
of an accident. To this fatal vessel he led Agrippina. He talked
with her affectionately and gravely on the way; 'and when
they-parted at the lakeside, with his old boyish familiarity he
pressed her closely to his heart, either to conceal his purpose, or
because the last sight of a mother, on the eve of death, touched
even his cruel nature, and then bade her farewell. 

Just at the point upon the lake where he had directed, as the
Empress sat in her cabin talking with her attendants, the
treacherous deck was let fall upon them all. But the plot failed.
She saw dead at her feet one of her favourites, crushed by the
sudden blow. But she had escaped it. She saw that death awaited
them all upon the vessel. The men around sprang forward, ready to
do their master's bidding in a less clumsy and more certain way.
But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprang from the
treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there, this
faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's
devotion, drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the
murderers above, by crying, as if in drowning, 'Save me, I am
Nero's mother!' Uttering those words of self-devotion, she was
killed by the murderers above, while the Empress, in safer silence,
buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated to the shore.

Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could
not stop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he
sent a soldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was
deserted even by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy,
they put to death the daughter and the mother of a Caesar. And
Nero only waits to look with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse,
before he returns to resume his government at Rome.

That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient
civilisation. It is complete in its centralising power; it is complete
in its external beauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden
to the eye, with luxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all;
but dust and ashes beneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head!
It is corrupted at the heart! There is nothing firm!

This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this very
moment there is announced the first germ of the new civilisation.
In the very midst of this falsehood, there sounds one vqice of truth;
in the very arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to
cleave him to the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He
meets the congratulations of a senate, which thank him and the
gods that he has murdered his own mother. With the agony of an
undying conscience torturing him, he strives to avert care by
amusement. He hopes to turn the mob from despising him by the
grandeur of their public entertainments. He enlarges for them the
circus. He calls unheard-of beasts to be baited and killed for their
enjoyment. The finest actors rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that
Nero may forget his mother, and that his people may forget him.

Ar that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs
inform him that his personal attention is required one morning, for
a state trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the
Emperor be there? May he not waste the hours in the
blandishments of lying courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a
mistress? If he chooses thus to postpone the audience, be it so;
Seneca, Burrhus, and his other counsellors will obey. But the time
will come when the worn-out boy will be pleased some morning
with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The time comes one
day. Worn out by the dissipation of the weelt, fretted by some
blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellors, and
bids them lead him to the audience-chamber where he -will attend
to these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that
moment that we are to look upon him.

He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with
boyish debauchery; his young forehead worn with the premature
sensual wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night s
intemperance. He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to
excite himself, and forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and
bids them call in the prisoner.

A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for
years. This soldier is a tried veteran of the Praetorian cohorts. He
was selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for
that purpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads
that other through the hail, he looks at him with a regard and
earnesmess which say he is no criminal to him. Long since, the
criminal has been the guardian of his keeper. Long since, the
keeper has cared for the prisoner with all the ardour of a new
found son's affection.

They lead that grey-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye
he glances keenly round the hail. That flashing eye has ere now
bade monarchs quail  and those thin lips have uttered words which
shall make the world ring till the last moment of the world shall
come. The stately Eastern captive moves unawed through the
assembly, till he makes a subject's salutation to the Emperor-judge
who is to hear him. And when, then, the grey-haired sage kneels
before the sensual boy, you see the prophet of the new civilisation
kneel before the monarch of the old! You see Paul make a subject
s formal reverence to 'Nero! Let me do justice to the court which is
to try him. In that judgement-hall there are not only the pomp of
Rome, and its crime; we have also the best of its wisdom. By the
dissolute boy, Nero, there stands the prime minister Seneca, the
chief of the philosophers of his time; 'Seneca the saint , cry the
Christians of the next century. We will own him to be Seneca the
wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage had been given the
education of the monster who was to rule the world. This sage had
introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when he
could, and with his colleague had conducted the general
administration of the Empire with the greatest honour, while the
boy was wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca
dared say more to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any
other man. For the young tiger was afraid of his old master long
after he had tasted blood. Yet Seneca's system was a cowardly
system. It was the best of Roman morality and Greek philosophy,
and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest of the men of the
old civilisation. He is the type of their excellences, as is Nero the
model of their power and their adornments. And yet all that
Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the baby-tyrant into
the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a province he
would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the murder of
a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the
ruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the
ruin of a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of
motives. He said he used all the power in his hands, and he thought
he did. He was one of those men of whom all times have their
share. The bravest of his time, he satisfied himself with alluring
the beardless Emperor by petty crime from public wrong; he could
flatter him to the expedient. He dared not order him to the right.

But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained
conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca s
brother, Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would
have dragged him to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that
Seneca and Paul had corresponded with each other before they
stood together in Nero's presence, the one as counsel for, the other
as the criminal. When Paul arose from that formal salutation, when
the apostle of the new civilisation spoke to the tottering monarch
of the old, if there had been one man in that assemblage, could he
have failed to see that that was a turning point in the world s
history? Before him in that little hail, in that little hour, was
passing the scene which for centuries would be acted out upon the
larger stage. -

Faith on the one side, before expediency and cruelty on the other!
Paul before Seneca and Nero! He was ready to address Nero, with
the eloquence and vehemence which for years had been
demanding utterance.

He stood at length before the baby Caesar, to whose tribunal he
had appealed from the provincial court of a doubting Festus and a
trembling Agrippa.

And who shall ask what words the vigorous Christian spoke to the
dastard boy! Who that knows the eloquence which rung out on the
ears of astonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense
and the hecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the
gabbling clamour of a wild mob atJerusalem-who will doubt the
tone in which Paul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment
before the man! The gilded dotard shrunk back from the home
truths of the new, young, vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred
legions was nothing before the God-commissioned prisoner.

No; though at this audience all men forsook Paul as he tells us;
though not one of the titled converts were there, but the soldier
chained at his side - still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's
minister.

From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old
in lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on
this God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such
uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre
of a dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and
drive him forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to
forget Paul-and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to
banish -them forever. He does not banish them forever!
Henceforward, whenever that spectre of a mother comes before
him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity which Paul has
spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the arena
bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the
only captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of
sturdy power!

And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a
great man who has detected his own meanness.

We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and
it is with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one or
another pettiness. Seneca goes home to say - 'This wild Easterner
has rebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him.
He stood there, as I have wanted to stand - a man before a brute.

'He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say.
Downright, straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to
Rome, as to man, and as to his vices, which I have longed to tell
him. He has done what I am afraid to do. He has dared this, which
I have dallied with, and left undone. What is the mystery of his
power? 

Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The 'Eastern mystery' 
was in presence before them, and they knew it not!

What was the mystery of Paul's power?

Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished
the hope of long years. Those solemn words of his, 'After that, I
muct also see Rome', expressed the longing of years, whose object
now, in part, at least, is gratified. He must see Rome!

It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul
has seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history  
that he is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life
should pass first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish
Europe. He knows that he is God's messenger to bear this mystery
of life eternal from the one land to the other, and to unfold it there.
And today has made real, in fact, this his inward confidence.
Today has put the seal of fact on that vision of his, years since,
when he first left his Asiatic home. A prisoner in chains, still he
has today seen the accomplishment of the vows, hopes, and
resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famous from the night
he spent there. There was another of these hours when God brings
into one spot the acts which shall be the argument of centuries of
history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiatic
journeys-Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament,
Eastern in his outward life, and Eastern in his faith-to that narrow
Hellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore
madly up the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even
love when it sought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs
frowning eternal hate from shore to shore. Paul stood upon the
Asian shore and looked across upon the Western. There were
Macedonia and the hills of Greece, here Troas and the ruins of
Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellespont has no voice but
separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, it might be, on
the tomb of Achilles, that night the 'man of Macedonia' appears,
and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt of
Troy.

'Come over and help us.' Give us life, for we gave you death. Give
us help for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the
heavenly vision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon
with the words of peace instead of war-the Christian shepherd of
the people, he carries to Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation
instead of carnage, of Charity instead of licence. And he knows
that to- Europe it is the beginning of her new - civilisation, it is the
dawn of her new warfare, of her new poetry, of her reign of heroes
who are immortal.

That faith of his, now years old, has this day recejved its crowning
victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together,
may well stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and
of licence.

And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved
him in planning it and carrying it through, was the 'Asian mystery .
Ask what was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby
Emperor, and abashed the baby Philosopher? -What did he give the
praise to, as he left that scene? What was the principle in action
there, but faith in the new life, faith in the God who gave it!

We do not wonder, as Seneca wondered, that such a man as Paul
dared say anything to such a boy as Nero! The absolute courage of
the new faith was the motive-power which forced it upon the
world. Here were the sternest of morals driven forward with the
most ultra bravery.

Perfect faith gave perfect courage to the first witnesses. And there
was the 'mystery  of their victories.

And so, in this case, when after a while Seneca again reminded
Nero of his captive, poor Nero did not dare but meet him again.
Yet, when he met him again in that same judgment-hall, he did not
dare hear him long; and we may be sure that there were but few
words before, with such affectation of dignity as he could
summon, he bade them set the prisoner free.

Paul free! The old had faced the new. Each had named its
champion. And the new conquers!

The Dot and Line Alphabet

This sketch was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly far
October 1858, just at the time that the first Atlantic cable, whose
first prattle had been welcomed by the acclamations of a continent,
gasped its last under the manipulations of De Sauty. It has since
been copied by Mr Prescott in his valuable hand-book of the
electric telegraph.

The war, which has taught us all so much, has given a brilliant
illustration of the dot and line alphabet, wholly apart from the
electric use of it, which will undoubtedly be often repeated In the
movements of our troops under General Foster in North Carolina,
Dr J. B. Upham of Boston, the distinguished medical director in
that department, equally distinguished fir the success with which
he has led forward the musical education of New England, trained
a corps of buglers to converse with each other by long and short
bugle-notes, and thus to carry information with literal accuracy
from point to point at any distance within which the tones of a
bugle could be heard. It will readily be seen that there are many
occasions in military affairs when such means of conversation
might prove of inestimable value. Mr Tuttle, the astronomer, on
duty in the same campaign, made a similar arrangement with long
and short flashes of light.

Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its
name from the Atlantic Monthly, I read in the September number
of that journal the revelations of an observer who was surprised to
find that he had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations
of the wire. I had the hope that he was about to explain to the
public the more general use of this instrument-which, with a
stupid fatuity, the public has as yet failed to grasp. Because its
signals have been first applied by means of electro-magnetism, and
afterwards by means of the chemical power of electricity, the
many-headed people refuses to avail itself, as it might do very
easily, of the same signals for the simpler transmission of
intelligence, whatever the power employed.

The great invention of Mr Morse is his register and alphabet. He
himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception
of the use of electricity as an errand-boy. Hundreds of people had
thought of that and suggested it; but Morse was the first to give the
errand-boy such a written message, that he could not lose it on the
way, nor mistake it when he arrived. The public, eager to thank
Morse, as he deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent.
For this he probably cares very little; nor do I care more. But the
public does not thank him for what he did originate - this
invaluable and simple alphabet. Now, as I use it myself in every
detail of life, and see every hour how the public might use it, if it
chose, I am really sorry for this negligence - both on the score of
his fame, and of general convenience.

Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious
alphabet reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the
rest of the writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made
by a dot, a space, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks . 
designate the letter A. The marks - . . . designate the letter B. All
the other letters are designated in as simple a manner.

Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my
life, (but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that
this simple alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals.
Long and short make it all-and wherever long and short can be
combined, be it in marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting fits, canes, or
children, ideas can be conveyed by this arrangement of the long
and short together. Only last night I was talking scandal with Mrs
Wilberforce at a summer party at the Hammersmiths. To my
amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play 'The Fisher s
Hornpipe , interrupted us by asking Mrs Wilberforce if she could
give her the idea of an air in 'The Butcher of Turin.  Mrs
Wilberforce had never heard that opera indeed, had never heard of
it. My angel-wife was surprised-stood thrumming at the piano  
wondered she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant
accord at all-but checked herself in her effort, as soon as I
observed that her long notes and short notes, in their turn-tee, tee  
tee-tee, tee-mm turn, meant, 'He's her brother.' The conversation
on her side turned from The Butcher of Turin , and I had just time
on the hint thus given me by Mrs I. to pass a grateful eulogiurn on
the distinguished statesman whom Mrs Wilberforce, with all a
sister's care, had rocked in his baby-cradle - whom but for my
wife's long and short notes, I should have clumsily abused among
the other statesmen of the day.

You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the
business simply of 'operators' in telegraphic dens to know this
Morse alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and
woman. If our school committees understood the times, it would
be taught, even before phonography or physiology, at school. I
believe both these sciences now precede the old English alphabet.

As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes
dong, dong, dong-dong, dong, dong, dong-dong. Nobody has
unlocked the church-door I know that, for Jam locked up in the
vestry. The, old tin sign, 'In case of fire, the key will be found at
the opposite house', has long since been taken down, and made
into the nose of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody-Two-Shoes
locked in. No one except me, and certainly I am not ringing the
bell. No!. But, thanks to Dr Channing's Fire Alarm,*1 the bell is
informing the South End that there is a fire in District
Dong-dong-dong-that is to say, District No. 3. Before I have
explained to you so far, the 'Eagle  engine, with a good deal of
noise, has passed the house on its way to that fated district. An
immense improvement this on the old system, when the engines
radiated from their houses in every possible direction, and the fire
was extingui~hed by. the few machines whose lines of quest
happened to cross each other at the particular place where the
child had been building cob-houses out of lucifer-matches in a
paper warehouse. Yes, it is a very great improvement. All those
persons, like you and me, who have no property in District
Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at ease-and little need we
think upon the mud above the knees of those who have property in
that district and are running to look after it. But for them the
improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot or cold, or
both, at the large District No. 2, to find that the lucifer-matches
were half a mile away from your store - and that your own private
watchman, even, had not been waked by the working of the distant
engines. Wet property holder, as you walk home, consider this.
When you are next in the Common Council, vote an appropriation
for applying Morse's alphabet of long and short to the bells. Then
they can be made to sound intelligibly, Daung ding ding - ding
ding daung-daung daung daung, and so on, will tell you as you
wake in the night that it is Mr B's store which is on fire, and not
yours, or that it is yours and not his. This is not only a convenience
to you and a relief to your wife and family, who will thus be spared
your excursions to unavailable and unsatisfactory fires, and your
somewhat irritated return- it will be a great relief to the Fire
Department. How placid the operations of a fire where none attend
except on business! The various engines arrive, but no throng of
distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the destruction of their
all. They have all roused on their pillows to learn that it is No. 530
Pearl Street which is in flames. All but the owner of No. 530 Pearl
Street have dropped back to sleep. He alone has rapidly repaired to
the scene. That is he, who stands in the uncrowded street with the
Chief Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she plays away. His
property destroyed, the engines retire - he mentions the amount of
his insurance to those persons who represent the daily press, they
all retire to their homes  and the whole is finished as simply,
almost, as was his private entry in his day-book the afternoon
before.*2

This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck long and
short, and we had all learned Morse's alphabet. Indeed, there is
nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time
enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the
town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse
alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the
words of Hail Columbia at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if
Mr Barnard should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy
had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be
set to work to speak articulately, in language regarding which the
dullest imagination need not, be at loss,

Turn again, Higginbottom,
Lord Mayor of Boston!

I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the
primary schools. I need not say I have taught itto my own children  
and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head, against
the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it
does; an alphabet of two characters matched against one of
twenty-six - or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the
phonotypists employ! On the Franklin-medal day I went to the
Johnson School examination. One of the committee asked a nice
girl what was the 'capital of Brazil. The child looked tired and
pale, and, for an instant, hesitated. But, before she had time to
commit herself, all answering was rendered impossible by an
awful turn of whooping-cough which one of my own sons was
seized with - who had gone to the examination with me. Hawm,
hem hem - hem hem hem - hem, hem - hawm, hem hem - hem
hem hem - hem, hem - barked the poor child, who was at the
opposite extreme of the school-room. The spectators and the
committee looked to see him fall dead with a broken blood-vessel.
I confess that I felt no alarm, after I observed that some of his
gasps were long and some very staccato; nor did pretty little Mabel
Warren. She recovered her colour - and, as soon as silence was in
the least restored, answered, 'Rio is the capital of Brazil, -  as
modestly and properly as if she had been taught it in her cradle.
They are nothing but children, any of them - but that afternoon,
after they had done all the singing the city needed for its annual
entertainment of the singers, I saw Bob and Mabel start for a long
expedition into West Roxbury - and when he came back, I know it
was a long featherfew, from her prize school-bouquet, that he
pressed in his Greene's AnaI~trir, with a short frond of maiden s
hair.

I hope nobody will write a letter to the Atlantic, to say that these
are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is
never trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from
mortification on examination day, as it is to tell Mr Fremont that
he is not elected President. If, however, the reader is distressed,
because these illustrations do not seem to his more benighted
observation to belong to the big bow-wow strain of human life, let
him consider the arrangement which ought to have been made
years since, for lee shores, railroad collisions, and that curious
class of maritime accidents where one steamer runs into another
under the impression that she is a lighthouse~ Imagine the Morse
alphabet applied to a steam whistle, which is often heard five
miles. It needs only long and short again. 'Stop Comet', for
instance, when you send it down the railroad line, by the wire, is
expressed thus - Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the
telegraph station when it comes! But what if Comet has gone by?
Much good will your trumpery message do then! If, however, you
have the wit to sound your long and short on an engine-whistle,
thus - scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre; scre scre scre scre scre;
scre scre scre; scre scre; screeeee screeeee; scre; screeeee - why,
then the whole neighbourhood, for five miles around, will know
that Comet must stop, if only they understand spoken language -
and among others, the engineman of Comet will understand it, and
Comet will not run into that wreck of worlds which gives the order
- with the nucleus of hot iron and his tail of five hundred tons of
coal. - So, of the signals which fog-bells can give, attached to
lighthouses. How excellent to have them proclaim through the
darkness, 'I am Wall!' Or of signals for steamship engineers. When
our friends were on board the Arabia the other day, and she and
the Europa pitched into each other - as if, on that happy week, all
the continents were to kiss and join hands all round - how great the
relief to the passengers on each, if, through every night of their
passage, collision had been prevented by this simple expedient!
One boat would have screamed, 'Europa, Europa, Europa', from
night to morning - and the other, 'Arabia, Arabia, Arabia -  and
neither would have been mistaken, as one unfortunately was, for a
lighthouse.

The long and short of it is, that whoever can mark distinctions of
time can use this alphabet of long-and-short, however he may,
mark them. It is therefore within the compass of all intelligent
beings, except those who are no longer conscious of the passage of
time, having exchanged its limitations for the wide sweep of
eternity. The illimitable range of this alphabet, however, is not half
disclosed when this has been said. Most articulate language
addresses itself to one sense, or at most to two, sight and sound. I
see, as! write, that the particular illustrations I have given are all of
them confined to signals seen or signals heard. But the
dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its history, has already
shown that it is not restricted to these two senses, but makes itself
intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is heard as well as read.
Any good operator understands the sounds of its ticks upon the
flowing strip of paper, as well as when he sees it. As he lies in his
cot at midnight, he will expound the passing message without
striking a light to see it. But this is only what may be said of any
written language. You can read this article to your wife, or she can
read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether it shall address
her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of Morse and
his imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses whichever of
the five senses the listener chooses. This fact is illustrated by a
curious set of anecdotes - never yet put in print, I think - of that
critical despatch which in one night announced General Taylor s
death to this whole land. Most of the readers of these lines
probably read that despatch in the morning's paper. The
compositors and editors had read it. To them it was a despatch to
the eye. But half the operators at the stations heard it ticked out, by
the register stroke, and knew it before they wrote it down for the
press. To them it was a despatch to the ear. My good friend
Langenzunge had not that resource. He had just been promised, by
the General himself (under whom he served at Palo Alto), the
office of Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Lines. He was
returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
on a freight-train, when he heard of the President's danger.
Langenzunge loved Old Rough and Ready - and he felt badly about
his own office, too. But his extempore train chose to stop at a
forsaken shanty-village on the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at
midnight. What does he do, but walk down the line into the
darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a wire, and applied the two
ends to his tongue, to taste, at the fatal moment, the words, 'Died at
half-past ten.' Poor Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the
wire again.

Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations
with Bain's chemical revolving disk. This disk is charged with a
salt of potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is
changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is noiselessly written in
dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk started on that fatal
despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up -
as the dear things will. They were beside themselves in the lonely,
dark office; but, while the men were fumbling for matches, which
would not go, Cogs's sister, Nydia, a sweet blind girl, who had
learned Bain's alphabet from Dr Howe at South Boston, bent over
the chemical paper, and smelt out the prussiate of potash, as it
formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story. Almost anybody
used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse
messages with the finger - and so this message was read at all the
midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where
the companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle
of acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous
instances, where the same message was seen, heard, smelled,
tasted, and felt So universal is the dot-and-line alphabet - for Bain's
is on the same principle as Morse's.

The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can
be employed by any being who has command of any long and short
symbols - be they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe
kept his accounts with, or long and short waves of electricity, such
as these which Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland
bay, so prophetically and appropriately named the Bay of Bulls.
Also, I hope the reader sees that the alphabet can be understood by
any intelligent being who has any one of the five senses left him  
by all rational men, that is, excepting the few eyeless deaf persons
who have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis.
The use of Morse's telegraph is by no means confined to the small
clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries. It is not
only the torpedo or the Gymnotus electricus that can send us
messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well
as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between
long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. If they will
only note the difference between long ,and short, the eel of Ocean
s bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages of our
Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on the
secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect which can
discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph
alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature which can hear,
smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can
understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying his
long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the
sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb
tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short
sixes and long nines. A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its
wants to the relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya by the
lispings of its short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.

*1-The Fire Alarm is the invention of Dr William F. Channing:

Wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,
The bells would ring in Notre Dame.

*2 -I am proud to say that such suggestions have had so much
weight, that in 1868 the alarm strikes the number of the box which
first telegraphs danger, six-four, six-four, &c., six being the district
number, and four the box number in that district.

The Last Voyage of the Resolute

I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had, I
believe, of examining the Resolute on her return frvm that weird
voyage which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of
the world. And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole
of that voyage than this, which was published in the Boston Daily
Advertiser of 11 June 1856, I reprint it here. Readers should
remember that the English government abandoned all claim on the
vessel; that the American government then bought her of the
salvors, refitted her completely, and sent her to England as a
present to the Queen. The Queen visited ,the ship, and accepted
the present in person. The Resolute has never since been to sea. I
do not load the page with authorities; but I studied the original
reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the paper,
and I believe it to be accurate throughout.

The voyage from New London to England when she was thus
returned, is strictly her last voyage. But when this article was
printed its name was correct.

It was in early spring in 1852, early on the morning of the 21 April,
that the stout English discovery ship Resolute, manned by a large
crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her
moorings in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of
London, was taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started
as one of a fine English squadron in the great search of the nations
for the lost Sir John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the
24 December, that the same ship, weatherworn, scantily rigged,
without her lighter masts, all in the trim of a vessel which has had
a hard fight with wind, water, ice, and time, made the lighthouse
of New London - waited for day and came ,round to anchor in the
other river Thames, of New England. Not one man of the English
crew was on board. The gallant Captain Kellett was not there; but
in his place an American master, who had shown, in his way, equal
gallantry. The sixty or seventy men with whom she sailed were all
in their homes more than a year ago. The eleven men with whom
she returned had had to double parts, and to work hard to make
good the places of the sixty. And between the day when the
Englishmen left her, and the day the Americans found her, she had
spent fifteen months and more alone. She was girt in by the ice of
the Arctic seas. No man knows where she went, what narrow
scapes she passed through, how low her thermometers marked
cold - it is a bit of her history which was never written. Nor what
befell her little tender, the Intrepid, which was left in her
neighbourhood, 'ready for occupation', just as she was left. No man
will ever tell of the nip that proved too much for her - of the
opening of her seams, and her disappearance beneath the ice. But
here is the hardly Resolute, which, on 15 May 1854, her brave
commander left, as he was ordered, 'ready for occupation' which
the brave Captain Buddington found 10 September 1855, more
than a thousand miles from there, and pronounced still 'ready
for occupation' -  and of what can be known of her history from
Old London to New London, from Old England's Thames to New
England's Thames, we will try to tell the story; as it is written in
the letters of her old officers and told by the lips of her new
rescuers.

For Arctic work, if ships are to go into every nook and lane of ice
that will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly
indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore,
and for discovery work, ships built of the teak wood of Malabar
and Java are considered most precisely fitted. Ships built of teak
are said to be wholly indestructible by time. To this we owe the
fact, which now becomes part of a strange coincidence, that one of
the old Captain Cook's ships which went round the world with him
has been, till within a few years, a-whaling among the American
whalers, revisiting, as a familiar thing, the shores which she was
first to discover. The English admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic
service a ship of the best build they could find, bought the two
teak-built ships Baboo and Ptarmigan in 1850 - sent them to their
own dockyards to be refitted, and the Baboo became the
Assistance - the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their
squadrons of Arctic discovery.

Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic shores
the ptarmigan is the bird most often found? It is the Arctic grouse
or partridge, and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island
furnished sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the
Resolute, wholly unconscious that she had ever been their
god-child, and had thrown off their name only to take that which
she now wears.

Early in May 1850, just at the time we now know that brave
Sir John Franidin and the remnant of his crew were dying of
starvation at the mouth of Back's River, the Resolute sailed first
for the Arctic seas, the flag-ship of Commodore Austin, with
whose little squadron our own De Haven and his men had such
pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island. In the course of that
expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island - and in autumn of
the next year returned to England.

Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England,
unless in the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory
over obstacle invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the
English way. And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain
Austin returned with his ships and men. There was also still a
lingering hope that some trace of Franklin might yet be found,
perhaps some of his party. Yet more, there were two of the
searching ships which had entered the Polar seas from Behring's
Straits on the west, the Enterprise and Investigator, which might
need relief before they came through or returned. Arctic search
-became a passion by this time, and at once a new squadron was
fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852. This squadron
consisted of the Assistance and Resolute again, which had been
refitted since their return, of the Intrepid and Pioneer, two
steamships used as tenders to the Assistance and Resolute
respectively, and of the North Star, which had also been in those
regions, and now went as a storeship to the rest of the squadron.
To the command of the whole Sir Edward Beicher was appointed,
an officer who had served in some of the earlier Arctic
expeditions. Officers, and men volunteered in full numbers for the
service, and these five vessels therefore carried out a body of men
who brought more experience of the Northern seas together than
any expedition which had ever visited them.

Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the Resolute,
and was second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the
Assistance the flagship. It shows what sort of man he was, to say
that for more than ten years he spent only part of one in England,
and was the rest of the time in an antipodean hemisphere or a
hyperborean zone. Before brave Sir John Franklin sailed, Captain
Kellett was in the Pacific. Just as he was to return home, he was
ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir John. Three years
successively, in his ship the Herald, he passed inside Behring's
Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean. He discovered Herald Island,
the farthest land known there. He was one of the last men to see
McClure in the Investigator before she entered the Polar seas from
the northwest He sent three of his men on board that ship to meet
them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings. After
more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to
England, in May or June 1851, and in the next winter volunteered
to try the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our ship, the
Resolute. Some of his old officers sailed with him.

We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters,
despatches, and instructions show, as they are now printed in
enormous parliamentary blue-books, and what the despatches and
letters of his officers and of his commander show. But these papers
present the picture of a vigorous, hearty man, kind to his crew and
a great favourite with them, brave in whatever trial, always
considerate, generous to his officers, reposing confidence in their
integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will be apt to hear
more. His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the same
standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself, not
very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in
short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic
winters. With him, as we trace the Resolute's fortunes, we shall
have much to do. Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all
along till the day when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward
Beicher, 'ready for occupation.'

With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men,  the Resolute cast off
her moorings in the grey of the morning on 11 April 1852, to go in
search of Sir Jobn Franklin. The brave Sir John had died two years
before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it. The river steam-tug
Monkey took her in tow, other steamers took the Assistance and
the North Star; the Intrepid and Pioneer got up their own steam,
and to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to
see them off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the
steamship Desperate took the Resolute in charge, Sir Edward
Belcher made the signal 'Orkneys'as the place of rendezvous, and
in four days she was there, in Stromness outer harbour. Here there
was a little shifting of provisions and coal-bags, those of the men
who could get on shore squandered their spending-money, and
then, on 28 April, she and hers bade goodbye to British soil. And,
though they have welcomed it again long since, she has not seen it
from then till now.

The Desperate steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines
to the North Star, and for three days in this procession of so wild
and weird a name, they three forged on westward toward
Greenland - a train which would have startled any old Viking had
he fallen in with it, with a fresh gale blowing all the time and 'a
nasty sea . On the fourth day all the tow-lines broke or were cast
off however, Neptune and the winds claimed their own, and the
Resolute tried her own resources. The towing steamers were sent
home in a few days more, and the squadron left to itself.

We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on
the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of
her passage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one
incident, which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular
coincidence. On the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice,
joined a fleet of whalers beset in it by a temporary opening 
between the gigantic masses. Caught at the head of a bight in the
ice, with the Assistance and the Pioneer, the Resolute was, for the
emergency, docked there, and, by the ice closing behind her, was,
for a while, detained. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet, whalers and
discovery ships, passed on by a little lane of water, the American
whaler McLellan leading. This McLellan was one of the ships of
the spirited New London merchants, Messrs Perkins & Smith,
another of whose vessels has now found the Resolute and
befriended her in her need in those seas. The McLellan was their
pioneer vessel there.

The North Star of the English squadron followed the McLellan. A
long train stretched out behind. Whalers and government ships, as
they happened to fall into line  a long three quarters of a mile. It
was lovely weather, and, though the long lane closed up so that
they could neither go back nor forward - nobody apprehended
injury till it was announced on the morning of the 7th that the poor
McLellan was nipped in the ice and her crew were deserting her.
Sir Edward Belcher was then in condition to befriend her, sent his
carpenters to examine her - put a few charges of powder into the
ice to relieve the pressure upon her - and by the end of the day it
was agreed that her injuries could be repaired, and her crew went
on board again. But there is no saying what ice will do next. The
next morning there was a fresh wind, the McLellan was caught
again, and the water poured into her, a steady stream. She drifted
about unmanageable, now into one ship, now into another, and the
English whalemen began to pour on board, to help themselves to
such plunder as they chose. At the Captain's request, Sir Edward
Belcher put an end to this, sent sentries on board, and working
parties, to clear her as far as might be, and keep account of what
her stores were and where they went to. In a day or two more she
sank to the water's edge and a friendly charge or two of powder
put her out of the way of harm to the rest of the fleet. After such a
week spent together it will easily be understood that the New
London whalemen did not feel strangers on board one of Sir
Edward's vessels when they found her 'ready for occupation  three
years and more afterwards.

In this tussle with the ice, the Resolute was nipped once or twice,
but she has known harder nips than that since. As July wore away,
she made her way across Baffin's Bay, and on 10 August made
Beechey Island - known now as the headquarters for years of the
searching squadrons, because, as it happened, the place where the
last traces of Franklin's ships were found - the wintering place of
his first winter. But Captain Kellett was on what is called the
'western search', and he only stayed at Beechey Island to complete
his provisions from the storeships and in the few days which this
took, to see for himself the sad memorials of Franklin's party - and
then the Resolute and Intrepid were away, through Barrow's Straits
on the track which Parry ran along with such success thirty-three
years before - and which no one had followed with as good fortune
as he, until now.

On 15 August Captain Kellett was off bade goodbye to the party at
Beechey Island, and was try his fortune in independent command.
He had not the best of luck at starting. The reader must remember
that one great object of these Arctic expeditions 'was to leave'
provisions for starving men. For such a purpose, and for travelling
parties of his own over the ice, Captain Kellett was to leave a
depot at Assistance Bay, some thirty miles only from Beechey
Island. In nearing for that purpose the Resolute grounded, was left
with but seven feet of water, the ice threw her over on her
starboard bilge, and she was almost lost. Not quite lost, however,
or we should not be telling her story. At midnight she was got off,
leaving sixty feet of her false keel behind. Captain Kellett forged
on in her - left a depot here and another there - and at the end of
the short Arctic summer had come as far westward as Sir Edward
Parry came. Here is the most west