Chapter V (4)

Often have I rambled to the summit of some favorite hill; and thence, with feelings sweetly tranquil, as the lucid expanse of the heavens that canopied me, have noted the slow and almost imperceptible changes that mark the waning year. There are many features peculiar to our autumn, and which give it an individual character. The “green and yellow melancholy” that first steals over the landscape—the mild and steady serenity of the weather, and the transparent purity of the atmosphere, speak, not merely to the senses, but the heart. It is the season of liberal emotions. To this succeeds fantastic gayety, a motley dress, which the woods assume, where green and yellow, orange, purple, crimson, and scarlet, are whimsically blended together. A sickly splendor this!—like the wild and broken-hearted gayety, that sometimes precedes dissolution,—or that childish sportiveness of superannuated age, proceeding, not from a vigorous flow of animal spirits, but from the decay and imbecility of the mind. We might, perhaps, be deceived by this gaudy garb of nature, were it not for the rustling of the falling leaf, which, breaking on the stillness of the scene, seems to announce, in prophetic whispers, the dreary winter that is approaching. When I have sometimes seen a thrifty young oak changing its hue of sturdy vigor for a bright, but transient glow of red, it has recalled to my mind the treacherous bloom that once mantled the cheek of a friend who is now no more; and which, while it seemed to promise a long life of jocund spirits, was the sure precursor of premature decay. In a little while, and this ostentatious foliage disappears; the close of autumn leaves but one wide expanse of dusky brown, save where some rivulet steals along, bordered with little strips of green grass; the woodland echoes no more to the carols of the feathered tribes that sported in the leafy covert, and its solitude and silence is uninterrupted except by the plaintive whistle of the quail, the barking of the squirrel, or the still more melancholy wintry wind, which, rushing and swelling through the hollows of the mountains, sighs through the leafless branches of the grove, and seems to mourn the desolation of the year.

To one who, like myself, is fond of drawing comparisons between the different divisions of life, and those of the seasons, there will appear a striking analogy, which connects the feelings of the aged with the decline of the year. Often, as I contemplate the mild, uniform, and genial lustre with which the sun cheers and invigorates us in the month of October, and the almost imperceptible haze which, without obscuring, tempers all the asperities of the landscape, and gives to every object a character of stillness and repose, I cannot help comparing it with that portion of existence when, the spring of youthful hope and the summer of the passions having gone by, reason assumes an undisputed sway, and lights us on with bright, but undazzling lustre, adown the hill of life. There is a full and mature luxuriance in the fields that fills the bosom with generous and disinterested content. It is not the thoughtless extravagance of spring, prodigal only in blossoms, nor the languid voluptuousness of summer, feverish in its enjoyments, and teeming only with immature abundance—it is that certain fruition of the labors of the past—that prospect of comfortable realities, which those will be sure to enjoy who have improved the beauteous smiles of heaven, nor wasted away their spring and summer in empty trifling or criminal indulgence.

Cousin Pindar, who is my constant companion in these expeditions, and who still possesses much of the fire and energy of youthful sentiment, and a buxom hilarity of the spirits, often, indeed, draws me from these half-melancholy reveries, and makes me feel young again by the enthusiasm with which he contemplates, and the animation with which he eulogizes the beauties of nature displayed before him. His enthusiastic disposition never allows him to enjoy things by halves, and his feelings are continually breaking out in notes of admiration and ejaculations that sober reason might perhaps deem extravagant. But, for my part, when I see a hale, hearty old man, who has jostled through the rough path of the world, without having worn away the fine edges of his feelings, or blunted his sensibility to natural and moral beauty, I compare him to the evergreen of the forest, whose colors, instead of fading at the approach of winter, seem to assume additional lustre, when contrasted with the surrounding desolation. Such a man is my friend Pindar; yet sometimes, and particularly at the approach of evening, even he will fall in with my humor; but he soon recovers his natural tone of spirits; and, mounting on the elasticity of his mind, like Ganymede on the eagle’s wing, he soars to the ethereal regions of sunshine and fancy.

One afternoon we had strolled to the top of a high hill in the neighborhood of the Hall, which commands an almost boundless prospect; and as the shadows began to lengthen around us, and the distant mountains to fade into mist, my cousin was seized with a moralizing fit. “It seems to me,” said he, laying his hand lightly on my shoulder, “that there is just at this season, and this hour, a sympathy between us and the world we are now contemplating. The evening is stealing upon nature as well as upon us; the shadows of the opening day have given place to those of its close; and the only difference is, that in the morning they were before us, now they are behind; and that the first vanished in the splendors of noonday, the latter will be lost in the oblivion of night. Our ‘May of life,’ my dear Launce, has forever fled; our summer is over and gone—but,” continued he, suddenly recovering himself, and slapping me gayly on the shoulder—“but why should we repine?—what? though the capricious zephyrs of spring, the heats and hurricanes of summer, have given place to the sober sunshine of autumn! and though the woods begin to assume the dappled livery of decay! yet the prevailing color is still green—gay, sprightly green.

“Let us then comfort ourselves with this reflection; that though the shades of the morning have given place to those of the evening—though the spring is past, the summer over, and the autumn come—still you and I go on our way rejoicing, and while, like the lofty mountains of our southern America, our heads are covered with snow, still, like them, we feel the genial warmth of spring and summer playing upon our bosoms.”

BY LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.,

In the description which I gave some time since, of Cockloft Hall, I totally forgot to make honorable mention of the library, which I confess was a most inexcusable oversight; for in truth it would bear a comparison, in point of usefulness and eccentricity, with the motley collection of the renowned hero of La Mancha.

It was chiefly gathered together by my grandfather; who spared neither pains nor expense to procure specimens of the oldest, most quaint, and insufferable books in the whole compass of English, Scotch, and Irish literature. There is a tradition in the family that the old gentleman once gave a grand entertainment in consequence of having got possession of a copy of a phillipic, by Archbishop Anselm, against the unseemly luxury of long-toed shoes, as worn by the courtiers in the time of William Rufus, which he purchased of an honest brick-maker in the neighborhood, for a little less than forty times its value. He had undoubtedly a singular reverence for old authors, and his highest eulogium on his library was, that it consisted of books not to be met with in any other collection; and as the phrase is, entirely out of print. The reason of which was, I suppose, that they were not worthy of being reprinted.

Cousin Christopher preserves these relics with great care, and has added considerably to the collection; for with the Hall he has inherited almost all the whimwhams of its former possessor. He cherishes a reverential regard for ponderous _tomes_ of Greek and Latin; though he knows about as much of these languages, as a young Bachelor of Arts does a year or two after leaving college. A worm-eaten work in eight or ten volumes he compares to an old family, more respectable for its antiquity than its splendor; a lumbering folio he considers as a duke; a sturdy quarto, as an earl; and a row of gilded duodecimos, as so many gallant knights of the garter. But as to modern works of literature, they are thrust into trunks and drawers, as intruding upstarts, and regarded with as much contempt as mushroom nobility in England; who, having risen to grandeur, merely by their talents and services, are regarded as utterly unworthy to mingle their blood with those noble currents that can be traced without a single contamination through a long line of, perhaps, useless and profligate ancestors, up to William the Bastard’s cook, or butler, or groom, or some one of Rollo’s freebooters.

Will Wizard, whose studies are of a most uncommon complexion, takes great delight in ransacking the library; and has been, during his late sojournings at the Hall, very constant and devout in his visits to this receptacle of obsolete learning. He seemed particularly tickled with the contents of the great mahogany chest of drawers mentioned in the beginning of this work. This venerable piece of architecture has frowned in sullen majesty, from a corner of the library, time out of mind; and is filled with musty manuscripts, some in my grandfather’s handwriting and others evidently written long before his day.

It was a sight, worthy of a man’s seeing, to behold Will with his outlandish phiz poring over old scrawls that would puzzle a whole society of antiquarians to expound, and diving into receptacles of trumpery, which for a century past, had been undisturbed by mortal hand. He would sit for whole hours, with a phlegmatic patience unknown in these degenerate days, except, peradventure, among the High Dutch commentators, prying into the quaint obscurity of musty parchments, until his whole face seemed to be converted into a folio leaf of black letter; and occasionally, when the whimsical meaning of an obscure passage flashed on his mind, his countenance would curl up into an expression of gothic risibility, not unlike the physiognomy of a cabbage leaf wilting before a hot fire.

At such times there was no getting Will to join in our walks; or take any part in our usual recreations; he hardly gave us an oriental tale in a week, and would smoke so inveterately that no one else dared to enter the library under pain of suffocation. This was more especially the case when he encountered any knotty piece of writing; and he honestly confessed to me that one worm-eaten manuscript, written in a pestilent crabbed hand, had cost him a box of the best Spanish cigars before he could make it out; and after all, it was not worth a tobacco-stalk. Such is the turn of my knowing associate; only let him get fairly in the track of any odd out-of-the-way whimwham, and away he goes, whip and cut, until he either runs down his game, or runs himself out of breath; I never in my life met with a man who rode his hobby-horse more intolerably hard than Wizard.

One of his favorite occupations, for some time past, has been the hunting of black letter, which he holds in high regard; and he often hints, that learning has been on the decline ever since the introduction of the Roman alphabet. An old book printed three hundred years ago is a treasure; and a ragged scroll, about one-half unintelligible, fills him with rapture. O! with what enthusiasm will he dwell on the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian, and Livy’s history; and when he relates the pious exertions of the Medici, in recovering the lost treasures of Greek and Roman literature, his eye brightens, and his face assumes all the splendor of an illuminated manuscript.

Will had vegetated for a considerable time in perfect tranquillity among dust and cobwebs, when one morning as we were gathered on the piazza, listening with exemplary patience to one of Cousin Christopher’s long stories about the Revolutionary War, we were suddenly electrified by an explosion of laughter from the library. My readers, unless peradventure they have heard honest Will laugh, can form no idea of the prodigious uproar he makes. To hear him in a forest, you would imagine—that is to say if you were classical enough—that the satyrs and the dryads had just discovered a pair of rural lovers in the shade, and were deriding, with bursts of obstreperous laughter, the blushes of the nymph and the indignation of the swain,—or if it were suddenly, as in the present instance, to break upon the serene and pensive silence of an autumnal morning, it would cause a sensation something like that which arises from hearing a sudden clap of thunder in a summer’s day, when not a cloud is to be seen above the horizon. In short, I recommend Will’s laugh as a sovereign remedy for the spleen: and if any of our readers are troubled with that villainous complaint—which can hardly be, if they make good use of our works—I advise them earnestly to get introduced to him forthwith.

This outrageous merriment of Will’s, as may be easily supposed, threw the whole family into a violent fit of wondering; we all, with the exception of Christopher, who took the interruption in high dudgeon, silently stole up to the library; and bolting in upon him, were fain at the first glance to join in his aspiring roar. His face—but I despair to give an idea of his appearance!—and until his portrait, which is now in the hands of an eminent artist, is engraved, my readers must be content: I promise them they shall one day or other have a striking likeness of Will’s indescribable phiz, in all its native comeliness.

Upon my inquiring the occasion of his mirth, he thrust an old, rusty, musty, and dusty manuscript into my hand, of which I could not decipher one word out of ten, without more trouble than it was worth. This task, however, he kindly took off my hands; and, in a little more than eight-and-forty hours, produced a translation into fair Roman letters; though he assured me it had lost a vast deal of its humor by being modernized and degraded into plain English. In return for the great pains he had taken, I could not do less than insert it in our work. Will informs me that it is but one sheet of a stupendous bundle which still remains uninvestigated. Who was the author we have not yet discovered; but a note on the back, in my grandfather’s handwriting, informs us that it was presented to him as a literary curiosity by his particular friend, the illustrious Rip Van Dam, formerly lieutenant-governor of the colony of New Amsterdam; and whose fame, if it has never reached these latter days, it was only because he was too modest a man ever to do anything worthy of being particularly recorded.

CHAP. CIX.—OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE RENOWNED AND ANTIENT CITY OF GOTHAM.

How Gotham city conquered was,
And how the folks turned apes—because.
_Link. Fid._

Albeit, much about this time it did fall out that the thrice renowned and delectable city of Gotham did suffer great discomfiture, and was reduced to perilous extremity, by the invasion and assaults of the Hoppingtots. These are a people inhabiting a far distant country, exceedingly pleasaunte and fertile; but they being withal egregiously addicted to migrations, do thence issue forth in mighty swarms, like the Scythians of old, overrunning divers countries and commonwealths, and committing great devastations wheresoever they do go, by their horrible and dreadful feats and prowesses. They are specially noted for being right valorous in all exercises of the leg; and of them it hath been rightly affirmed that no nation in all Christendom or elsewhere, can cope with them in the adroit, dexterous, and jocund shaking of the heel.

This engaging excellence doth stand unto them a sovereign recommendation, by which they do insinuate themselves into universal favor and good countenance; and it is a notable fact, that, let a Hoppingtot but once introduce a foot into company, and it goeth hardly if he doth not contrive to flourish his whole body in thereafter. The learned Linkum Fidelius, in his famous and unheard-of treatise on man, whom he defineth, with exceeding sagacity, to be a corn-cutting, tooth-drawing animal, is particularly minute and elaborate in treating of the nation of the Hoppingtots, and betrays a little of the Pythagorean in his theory, inasmuch as he accounteth for their being so wonderously adroit in pedestrian exercises, by supposing that they did originally acquire this unaccountable and unparalleled aptitude for huge and unmatchable feats of the leg, by having heretofore been condemned for their numerous offenses against that harmless race of bipeds,—or quadrupeds, for herein the sage Linkum Fidelius appeareth to doubt and waver exceedingly—the frogs, to animate their bodies for the space of one or two generations.

He also giveth it as his opinion, that the name of Hoppingtots is manifestly derivative from this transmigration. Be this, however, as it may, the matter, albeit it has been the subject of controversy among the learned, is but little pertinent to the subject of this history; wherefore shall we treat and consider it as naughte.

Now these people being thereto impelled by a superfluity of appetite, and a plentiful deficiency of the wherewithal to satisfy the same, did take thought that the antient and venerable city of Gotham, was, peradventure, possessed of mighty treasures, and did, moreover, abound with all manner of fish and flesh, and eatables and drinkables, and such like delightsome and wholesome excellencies withal. Whereupon calling a council of the most active heeled warriors, they did resolve forthwith to put forth a mighty array, make themselves masters of the same, and revel in the good things of the land. To this were they hotly stirred up, and wickedly incited, by two redoubtable and renowned warriors, hight Pirouet and Rigadoon; ycleped in such sort, by reason that they were two mighty, valiant, and invincible little men; utterly famous for the victories of the leg which they had, on divers illustrious occasions, right gallantly achieved.

These doughty champions did ambitiously and wickedly inflame the minds of their countrymen, with gorgeous descriptions, in the which they did cunninglie set forth the marvelous riches and luxuries of Gotham; where Hoppingtots might have garments for their bodies, shirts to their ruffles, and might riot most merrily every day in the week on beef, pudding, and such like lusty dainties. They, Pirouet and Rigadoon, did likewise hold out hopes of an easy conquest; forasmuch as the Gothamites were as yet but little versed in the mystery and science of handling the legs; and being, moreover, like unto that notable bully of antiquity, Achilles, most vulnerable to all attacks on the heel, would doubtless surrender at the very first assault. Whereupon, on the hearing of this inspiriting counsel, the Hoppingtots did set up a prodigious great cry of joy, shook their heels in triumph, and were all impatience to dance on to Gotham and take it by storm.

The cunning Pirouet, and that arch caitiff Rigadoon, knew full well how to profit of this enthusiasm. They forthwith did order every man to arm himself with a certain pestilent little weapon called a fiddle; to pack up in his knapsack a pair of silk breeches, the like of ruffles, a cocked hat of the form of a half-moon, a bundle of catgut—and inasmuch as in marching to Gotham, the army might peradventure be smitten with scarcity of provisions, they did account it proper that each man should take especial care to carry with him a bunch of right merchantable onions. Having proclaimed these orders by sound of fiddle, they, Pirouet and Rigadoon, did accordingly put their army behind them, and striking up the right jolly and sprightful tune of _Ça Ira_, away they all capered toward the devoted city of Gotham, with a most horrible and appalling chattering of voices.

Of their first appearance before the beleaguered town, and of the various difficulties which did encounter them in their march, this history saith not; being that other matters of more weighty import require to be written. When that the army of the Hoppingtots did peregrinate within sight of Gotham, and the people of the city did behold the villainous and hitherto unseen capers and grimaces which they did make, a most horrific panic was stirred up among the citizens; and the sages of the town fell into great despondency and tribulation, as supposing that these invaders were of the race of the Jig-hees, who did make men into baboons when they achieved a conquest over them. The sages, therefore, called upon all the dancing-men and dancing-women, and exhorted them, with great vehemence of speech, to make heel against the invaders, and to put themselves upon such gallant defense, such glorious array, and such sturdy evolution, elevation, and transposition of the foot as might incontinently impester the legs of the Hoppingtots, and produce their complete discomfiture. But so it did happen, by great mischance, that divers light-heeled youths of Gotham, more especially those who are descended from three wise men, so renowned of yore for having most venturesomely voyaged over sea in a bowl, were, from time to time, captured and inveigled into the camp of the enemy; where, being foolishly cajoled and treated for a season with outlandish disports and pleasantries, they were sent back to their friends, entirely changed, degenerated, and turned topsy-turvy; insomuch that they thought thenceforth of nothing but their heels, always essaying to thrust them into the most manifest point of view; and, in a word, as might truly be affirmed, did forever after walk upon their heads outright.

And the Hoppingtots did day by day, and at late hours of the night, wax more and more urgent in this their investment of the city. At one time they would, in goodly procession, make an open assault by sound of fiddle in a tremendous contra-dance—and anon they would advance by little detachments and maneuvers to take the town by figuring in cotillons. But truly their most cunning and devilish craft and subtilty was made manifest in their strenuous endeavors to corrupt the garrison, by a most insidious and pestilent dance called the _Waltz_. This, in good truth, was a potent auxiliary; for, by it, were the heads of the simple Gothamites most villainously turned, their wits sent a wool-gathering, and themselves on the point of surrendering at discretion even unto the very arms of their invading foemen.

At length the fortifications of the town began to give manifest symptoms of decay; inasmuch as the breastwork of decency was considerably broken down, and the curtain works of propriety blown up. When that cunning caitiff, Pirouet, beheld the ticklish and jeopardized state of the city—“Now, by my leg,” quoth he,—he always swore by his leg, being that it was an exceedingly goodlie leg,—“now, by my leg,” quoth he, “but this is no great matter of recreation; I will show these people a pretty, strange, and new way, forsooth, presently, and will shake the dust off my pumps upon this most obstinate and uncivilized town. Whereupon he ordered, and did command his warriors, one and all, that they should put themselves in readiness, and prepare to carry the town by a GRAND BALL. They, in nowise to be daunted, do forthwith, at the word, equip themselves for the assault; and in good faith, truly, it was a gracious and glorious sight—a most triumphant and incomparable spectacle—to behold them gallantly arrayed in glossy and shining silk breeches tied with abundance of ribbon; with silken hose of the gorgeous color of the salmon; right goodlie morocco pumps, decorated with clasps or buckles of a most cunninge and secret contrivance, inasmuch as they did of themselves grapple to the shoe without any aid of fluke or tongue, marvelously ensembling witchcraft and necromancy. They had, withal, exuberant chitterlings, which puffed out at the neck and bosom, after a most jolly fashion, like unto the beard of an antient he-turkey; and cocked hats, the which they did carry not on their heads, after the fashion of the Gothamites, but under their arms, as a roasted fowl his gizzard.”

Thus being equipped and marshaled, they do attack, assault, batter, and belabor the town with might and main; most gallantly displaying the vigor of their legs, and shaking their heels at it most emphatically. And the manner of their attack was in this sort: first, they did thunder and gallop forward in a _contre-temps_—and anon, displayed column in a Cossack dance, a fandango, or a gavot. Whereat the Gothamites, in nowise understanding this unknown system of warfare, marveled exceedinglie, and did open their mouths incontinently, the full distance of a bow-shot, meaning a cross-bow, in sore dismay and apprehension. Whereupon, saith Rigadoon, flourishing his left leg with great expression of valor, and most magnific carriage: “My copesmates, for what wait we here? are not the townsmen already won to our favor? do not their women and young damsels wave to us from the walls in such sort that, albeit there is some show of defense, yet is it manifestly converted into our interests?” So saying, he made no more ado, but leaping into the air about a flight-shot, and crossing his feet six times, after the manner of the Hoppingtots, he gave a short partridge-run, and with mighty vigor and swiftness did bolt outright over the walls with a somerset. The whole army of Hoppingtots danced in after their valiant chieftain, with an enormous squeaking of fiddles, and a horrific blasting and brattling of horns; insomuch that the dogs did howl in the streets, so hideously were their ears assailed. The Gothamites made some semblance of defense, but their women having been all won over into the interest of the enemy, they were shortly reduced to make most abject submission; and delivered over to the coercion of certain professors of the Hoppingtots, who did put them under most ignominious durance, for the space of a long time, until they had learned to turn out their toes, and flourish their legs after the manner of their conquerors. And thus, after the manner I have related, was the mighty and puissant city of Gotham circumvented, and taken by a _coup de pied_: or, as it might be rendered, by force of legs.

The conquerors showed no mercy, but did put all ages, sexes, and conditions, to the fiddle and the dance; and, in a word, compelled and enforced them to become absolute Hoppingtots. “Habit,” as the ingenious Linkum Fidelius profoundly affirmeth, “is second nature.” And this original and invaluable observation hath been most aptly proved, and illustrated, by the example of the Gothamites, ever since this disastrous and unlucky mischance. In process of time, they have waxed to be most flagrant, outrageous, and abandoned dancers; they do ponder on naughte but how to gallantize it at balls, routs, and fandangoes; insomuch that the like was in no time or place ever observed before. They do moreover, pitifully devote their nights to the jollification of the legs, and their days forsooth to the instruction and edification of the heel. And to conclude; their young folk, who whilome did bestow a modicum of leisure upon the head, have of late utterly abandoned this hopeful task, and have quietly, as it were, settled themselves down into mere machines, wound up by a tune, and set in motion by a fiddle-stick!

NO. XVIII.—TUESDAY, NOV. 24, 1807.

THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK.

BY LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.

The following story has been handed down by family tradition for more than a century. It is one on which my cousin Christopher dwells with more than usual prolixity; and, being in some measure connected with a personage often quoted in our work, I have thought it worthy of being laid before my readers.

Soon after my grandfather, Mr. Lemuel Cockloft, had quietly settled himself at the Hall, and just about the time that the gossips of the neighborhood, tired of prying into his affairs, were anxious for some new tea-table topic, the busy community of our little village was thrown into a grand turmoil of curiosity and conjecture—a situation very common to little gossiping villages—by the sudden and unaccountable appearance of a mysterious individual.

The object of this solicitude was a little black-looking man, of a foreign aspect, who took possession of an old building, which having long had the reputation of being haunted, was in a state of ruinous desolation, and an object of fear to all true believers in ghosts. He usually wore a high sugarloaf hat with a narrow brim; and a little black cloak, which, short as he was, scarcely reached below his knees. He sought no intimacy or acquaintance with any one; appeared to take no interest in the pleasures or the little broils of the village; nor ever talked; except sometimes to himself in an outlandish tongue. He commonly carried a large book, covered with sheepskin, under his arm; appeared always to be lost in meditation; and was often met by the peasantry, sometimes watching the dawning of day, sometimes at noon seated under a tree, poring over his volume; and sometimes at evening gazing with a look of sober tranquillity at the sun as it gradually sunk below the horizon.

The good people of the vicinity beheld something prodigiously singular in all this; a profound mystery seemed to hang about the stranger which, with all their sagacity, they could not penetrate; and in the excess of worldly charity they pronounced it a sure sign “that he was no better than he should be;” a phrase innocent enough in itself: but which, as applied in common, signifies nearly everything that is bad. The young people thought him a gloomy misanthrope, because he never joined in their sports; the old men thought still more hardly of him because he followed no trade, and never seemed ambitious of earning a farthing; and as to the old gossips, baffled by the inflexible taciturnity of the stranger, they unanimously decreed that a man who could not or would not talk was no better than a dumb beast. The little man in black, careless of their opinions, seemed resolved to maintain the liberty of keeping his own secret; and the consequence was that, in a little while, the whole village was in an uproar; for in little communities of this description, the members have always the privilege of being thoroughly versed, and even of meddling in all the affairs of each other.

A confidential conference was held one Sunday morning after sermon, at the door of the village church, and the character of the unknown fully investigated. The schoolmaster gave it as his opinion that he was the wandering Jew; the sexton was certain that he must be a freemason, from his silence; a third maintained, with great obstinacy, that he was a high German doctor, and that the book which he carried about with him contained the secrets of the black art; but the most prevailing opinion seemed to be that he was a witch; a race of beings at that time abounding in those parts; and a sagacious old matron, from Connecticut, proposed to ascertain the fact by sousing him into a kettle of hot water.

Suspicion, when once afloat, goes with wind and tide, and soon becomes certainty. Many a stormy night was the little man in black seen by the flashes of lightning, frisking and curveting in the air upon a broomstick; and it was always observed that at those times the storm did more mischief than at any other. The old lady, in particular, who suggested the humane ordeal of the boiling kettle, lost on one of these occasions a fine brindle cow; which accident was entirely ascribed to the vengeance of the little man in black. If ever a mischievous hireling rode his master’s favorite horse to a distant frolic, and the animal was observed to be lame and jaded in the morning, the little man in black was sure to be at the bottom of the affair; nor could a high wind howl through the village at night but the old women shrugged up their shoulders, and observed, “the little man in black was in his _tantrums_.” In short, he became the bugbear of every house; and was as effectual in frightening little children into obedience and hysterics, as the redoubtable Raw-head-and-bloody-bones himself; nor could a housewife of the village sleep in peace except under the guardianship of a horseshoe nailed to the door.

The object of these direful suspicions remained for some time totally ignorant of the wonderful quandary he had occasioned; but he was soon doomed to feel its effects. An individual who is once so unfortunate as to incur the odium of a village is in a great measure outlawed and proscribed; and becomes a mark for injury and insult; particularly if he has not the power or the disposition to recriminate. The little venomous passions, which in the great world are dissipated and weakened by being widely diffused, act in the narrow limits of a country town with collected vigor, and become rancorous in proportion as they are confined in their sphere of action. The little man in black experienced the truth of this; every mischievous urchin returning from school had full liberty to break his windows; and this was considered as a most daring exploit; for in such awe did they stand of him, that the most adventurous schoolboy was never seen to approach his threshold, and at night would prefer going round by the cross-roads, where a traveller had been murdered by the Indians, rather than pass by the door of his forlorn habitation.

The only living creature that seemed to have any care or affection for this deserted being was an old turnspit—the companion of his lonely mansion and his solitary wandering—the sharer of his scanty meals, and—sorry I am to say it—the sharer of his persecutions. The turnspit, like his master, was peaceable and inoffensive; never known to bark at a horse, to growl at a traveller, or to quarrel with the dogs of the neighborhood. He followed close at his master’s heels when he went out, and when he returned stretched himself in the sunbeams at the door; demeaning himself in all things like a civil and well-disposed turnspit. But notwithstanding his exemplary deportment, he fell likewise under the ill report of the village, as being the familiar of the little man in black, and the evil spirit that presided at his incantations. The old hovel was considered as the scene of their unhallowed rites, and its harmless tenants regarded with a detestation which their inoffensive conduct never merited. Though pelted and jeered at by the brats of the village, and frequently abused by their parents, the little man in black never turned to rebuke them; and his faithful dog, when wantonly assaulted, looked up wistfully in his master’s face, and there learned a lesson of patience and forbearance.

The movements of this inscrutable being had long been the subject of speculation at Cockloft Hall, for its inmates were full as much given to wondering as their descendants. The patience with which he bore his persecutions particularly surprised them; for patience is a virtue but little known in the Cockloft family. My grandmother, who, it appears, was rather superstitious, saw in this humility nothing but the gloomy sullenness of a wizard who restrained himself for the present, in hopes of midnight vengeance; the parson of the village, who was a man of some reading, pronounced it the stubborn insensibility of a stoic philosopher; my grandfather, who, worthy soul, seldom wandered abroad in search of conclusions, took a data from his own excellent heart, and regarded it as the humble forgiveness of a Christian. But however different were their opinions as to the character of the stranger, they agreed in one particular, namely, in never intruding upon his solitude; and my grandmother, who was at that time nursing my mother, never left the room without wisely putting the large family Bible in the cradle—a sure talisman, in her opinion, against witchcraft and necromancy.

One stormy winter night, when a bleak northeast wind moaned about the cottages, and howled around the village steeple, my grandfather was returning from club, preceded by a servant with a lantern. Just as he arrived opposite the desolate abode of the little man in black, he was arrested by the piteous howling of a dog, which, heard in the pauses of a storm, was exquisitely mournful; and he fancied, now and then, that he caught the low and broken groans of some one in distress. He stopped for some minutes, hesitating between the benevolence of his heart and a sensation of genuine delicacy, which, in spite of his eccentricity, he fully possessed—and which forbade him to pry into the concerns of his neighbors. Perhaps, too, this hesitation might have been strengthened by a little taint of superstition; for surely, if the unknown had been addicted to witchcraft, this was a most propitious night for his vagaries. At length the old gentleman’s philanthropy predominated; he approached the hovel, and, pushing open the door—for poverty has no occasion for locks and keys—beheld, by the light of the lantern, a scene that smote his generous heart to the core.

On a miserable bed, with pallid and emaciated visage, and hollow eyes—in a room destitute of every convenience—without fire to warm or friend to console him, lay this helpless mortal, who had been so long the terror and wonder of the village. His dog was crouching on the scanty coverlet, and shivering with cold. My grandfather stepped softly and hesitatingly to the bedside, and accosted the forlorn sufferer in his usual accents of kindness. The little man in black seemed recalled by the tones of compassion from the lethargy into which he had fallen; for, though his heart was almost frozen, there was yet one chord that answered to the call of the good old man who bent over him; the tones of sympathy, so novel to his ear, called back his wandering senses, and acted like a restorative to his solitary feelings.

He raised his eyes, but they were vacant and haggard; he put forth his hand, but it was cold; he essayed to speak, but the sound died away in his throat; he pointed to his mouth with an expression of dreadful meaning, and, sad to relate, my grandfather understood that the harmless stranger, deserted by society, was perishing with hunger! With the quick impulse of humanity, he dispatched the servant to the Hall for refreshment. A little warm nourishment renovated him for a short time, but not long; it was evident his pilgrimage was drawing to a close, and he was about entering that peaceful asylum, where “the wicked cease from troubling.”

His tale of misery was short and quickly told; infirmities had stolen upon him, heightened by the rigors of the season: he had taken to his bed, without strength to rise and ask for assistance—“and if I had,” said he, in a tone of bitter despondency, “to whom should I have applied? I have no friend that I know of in the world! The villagers avoid me as something loathsome and dangerous; and here, in the midst of Christians, should I have perished, without a fellow-being to soothe the last moments of existence, and close my dying eyes, had not the howlings of my faithful dog excited your attention.”

He seemed deeply sensible of the kindness of my grandfather; and at one time, as he looked up into his old benefactor’s face, a solitary tear was observed to steal adown the parched furrows of his cheek. Poor outcast! it was the last tear he shed; but I warrant it was not the first by millions. My grandfather watched by him all night. Toward morning he gradually declined; and, as the rising sun gleamed through the window, he begged to be raised in his bed, that he might look at it for the last time. He contemplated it for a moment, with a kind of religious enthusiasm, and his lips moved as if engaged in prayer. The strange conjectures concerning him rushed on my grandfather’s mind; “he is an idolater,” thought he, “and is worshipping the sun!” He listened a moment, and blushed at his own uncharitable suspicion; he was only engaged in the pious devotions of a Christian. His simple orison being finished, the little man in black withdrew his eyes from the east, and, taking my grandfather’s hand in one of his, and making a motion with the other toward the sun: “I love to contemplate it,” said he; “’tis an emblem of the universal benevolence of a true Christian; and it is the most glorious work of Him, who is philanthropy itself!” My grandfather blushed still deeper at his ungenerous surmises; he had pitied the stranger at first, but now he revered him. He turned once more to regard him, but his countenance had undergone a change; the holy enthusiasm that had lighted up each feature had given place to an expression of mysterious import; a gleam of grandeur seemed to steal across his Gothic visage, and he appeared full of some mighty secret which he hesitated to impart. He raised the tattered night-cap that had sunk almost over his eyes, and waving his withered hand with a slow and feeble expression of dignity—“In me,” said he, with laconic solemnity—“in me you behold the last descendant of the renowned Linkum Fidelius!” My grandfather gazed at him with reverence; for though he had never heard of the illustrious personage, thus pompously announced, yet there was a certain black-letter dignity in the name that peculiarly struck his fancy and commanded his respect.

“You have been kind to me,” continued the little man in black, after a momentary pause, “and richly will I requite your kindness by making you heir to my treasures! In yonder large deal box are the volumes of my illustrious ancestor, of which I alone am the fortunate possessor. Inherit them, ponder over them, and be wise!” He grew faint with the exertion he had made, and sunk back almost breathless on his pillow. His hand, which, inspired with the importance of his subject, he had raised to my grandfather’s arm, slipped from its hold and fell over the side of the bed, and his faithful dog licked it, as if anxious to soothe the last moments of his dying master and testify his gratitude to the hand that had so often cherished him. The untaught caresses of the faithful animal were not lost upon his dying master; he raised his languid eyes, turned them on the dog, then on my grandfather; and having given this silent recommendation—closed them for ever.

The remains of the little man in black, notwithstanding the objections of many pious people, were decently interred in the churchyard of the village; and his spirit, harmless as the body it once animated, has never been known to molest a living being. My grandfather complied, as far as possible, with his last request; he conveyed the volumes of Linkum Fidelius to his library; he pondered over them frequently; but whether he grew wiser, the tradition doth not mention. This much is certain, that his kindness to the poor descendant of Fidelius was amply rewarded by the approbation of his own heart, and the devoted attachment of the old turnspit; who, transferring his affection from his deceased master to his benefactor, became his constant attendant, and was father to a long line of runty curs that still flourish in the family. And thus was the Cockloft library first enriched by the invaluable folios of the sage LINKUM FIDELIUS.

LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN,
TO ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BASHAW OF
TRIPOLI.

Though I am often disgusted, my good Asem, with the vices and absurdities of the men of this country, yet the women afford me a world of amusement. Their lively prattle is as diverting as the chattering of the red-tailed parrot; nor can the green-headed monkey of Timandi equal them in whim and playfulness. But, notwithstanding these valuable qualifications, I am sorry to observe they are not treated with half the attention bestowed on the before mentioned animals. These infidels put their parrots in cages and chain their monkeys; but their women, instead of being carefully shut up in harems and seraglios, are abandoned to the direction of their own reason, and suffered to run about in perfect freedom, like other domestic animals. This comes, Asem, of treating their women as rational beings, and allowing them souls. The consequence of this piteous neglect may easily be imagined; they have degenerated into all their native wildness, are seldom to be caught at home, and, at an early age, take to the streets and highways, where they rove about in droves, giving almost as much annoyance to the peaceable people as the troops of wild dogs that infest our great cities, or the flights of locusts that sometimes spread famine and desolation over whole regions of fertility.

This propensity to relapse into pristine wildness, convinces me of the untamable disposition of the sex, who may indeed be partially domesticated by a long course of confinement and restraint, but the moment they are restored to personal freedom, become wild as the young partridge of this country, which, though scarcely half-hatched, will take to the fields and run about with the shell upon its back.

Notwithstanding their wildness, however, they are remarkably easy of access, and suffer themselves to be approached at certain hours of the day, without any symptoms of apprehension; and I have even happily succeeded in detecting them at their domestic occupations. One of the most important of these, consists in thumping vehemently on a kind of musical instrument, and producing a confused, hideous, and indefinable uproar, which they call the description of a battle—a jest, no doubt, for they are wonderfully facetious at times, and make great practice of passing jokes upon strangers. Sometimes they employ themselves in painting little caricatures of landscapes, wherein they display their singular drollery in bantering nature fairly out of countenance; representing her tricked out in all the tawdry finery of copper skies, purple rivers, calico rocks, red grass, clouds that look like old clothes set adrift by the tempest, and foxy trees, whose melancholy foliage, drooping and curling most fantastically, reminds me of an undressed periwig that I have, now and then, seen hung on a stick in a barber’s window. At other times, they employ themselves in acquiring a smattering of languages spoken by nations on the other side of the globe, as they find their own language not sufficiently copious to supply their constant demands, and express their multifarious ideas. But their most important domestic avocation is, to embroider, on satin or muslin, flowers of a nondescript kind, in which the great art is to make them as unlike nature as possible—or to fasten little bits of silver, gold, tinsel and glass, on long strips of muslin, which they drag after them with much dignity whenever they go abroad—a fine lady, like a bird of paradise, being estimated by the length of her tail.

But do not, my friend, fall into the enormous error of supposing that the exercise of these arts is attended with any useful or profitable results; believe me, thou couldst not indulge an idea more unjust and injurious; for it appears to be an established maxim among the women of this country, that a lady loses her dignity when she condescends to be useful; and forfeits all rank in society the moment she can be convicted of earning a farthing. Their labors, therefore, are directed, not toward supplying their household, but in decking their persons, and—generous souls—they deck their persons, not so much to please themselves, as to gratify others, particularly strangers. I am confident thou wilt stare at this, my good Asem, accustomed as thou art to our eastern females, who shrink in blushing timidity even from the glance of a lover, and are so chary of their favors, that they even seem fearful of lavishing their smiles too profusely on their husbands. Here, on the contrary, the stranger has the first place in female regard, and, so far do they carry their hospitality that I have seen a fine lady slight a dozen tried friends and real admirers, who lived in her smiles and made her happiness their study, merely to allure the vague and wandering glances of a stranger, who viewed her person with indifference, and treated her advances with contempt. By the whiskers of our sublime bashaw, but this is highly flattering to a foreigner! and thou mayest judge how particularly pleasing to one who is, like myself, so ardent an admirer of the sex. Far be it from me to condemn this extraordinary manifestation of good-will—let their own countrymen look to that.

Be not alarmed, I conjure thee, my dear Asem, lest I should be tempted, by these beautiful barbarians, to break the faith I owe to the three-and-twenty wives, from whom my unhappy destiny has perhaps severed me forever. No, Asem, neither time, nor the bitter succession of misfortunes that pursue me, can shake from my heart the memory of former attachments. I listen with tranquil heart to the strumming and prattling of these fair sirens; their whimsical paintings touch not the tender chord of my affections; and I would still defy their fascinations, though they trailed after them tails as long as the gorgeous trappings which are dragged at the heels of the holy camel of Mecca; or as the tail of the great beast in our prophet’s vision, which measured three hundred and forty-nine leagues, two miles, three furlongs, and a hand’s breadth in longitude.

The dress of these women is, if possible, more eccentric and whimsical than their deportment; and they take an inordinate pride in certain ornaments which are probably derived from their savage progenitors. A woman of this country, dressed out for an exhibition, is loaded with as many ornaments as a Circassian slave when brought out for sale. Their heads are tricked out with little bits of horn or shell, cut into fantastic shapes, and they seem to emulate each other in the number of these singular baubles—like the women we have seen in our journeys to Aleppo, who cover their heads with the entire shell of a tortoise, and, thus equipped, are the envy of all their less fortunate acquaintance. They also decorate their necks and ears with coral, gold chains, and glass beads, and load their fingers with a variety of rings; though I must confess, I have never perceived that they wear any in their noses—as has been affirmed by many travellers. We have heard much of their painting themselves most hideously, and making use of bear’s grease in great profusion; but this, I solemnly assure thee, is a misrepresentation; civilization, no doubt, having gradually extirpated these nauseous practices. It is true, I have seen two or three of these females, who had disguised their features with paint; but then it was merely to give a tinge of red to their cheeks, and did not look very frightful; and as to ointment, they rarely use any now, except occasionally a little Grecian oil for their hair, which gives it a glossy, greasy, and, they think, very comely appearance. The last mentioned class of females, I take it for granted, have been but lately caught, and still retain strong traits of their original savage propensities.

The most flagrant and inexcusable fault, however, which I find in these lovely savages, is the shameless and abandoned exposure of their persons. Wilt thou not suspect me of exaggeration when I affirm—wilt thou not blush for them, most discreet Mussulman, when I declare to thee, that they are so lost to all sense of modesty, as to expose the whole of their faces, from their forehead to the chin, and they even go abroad with their hands uncovered! Monstrous indelicacy!

But what I am going to disclose will, doubtless, appear to thee still more incredible. Though I cannot forbear paying a tribute of admiration to the beautiful faces of these fair infidels, yet I must give it as my firm opinion that their persons are preposterously unseemly. In vain did I look around me, on my first landing, for those divine forms of redundant proportions, which answer to the true standard of Eastern beauty. Not a single fat fair one could I behold among the multitudes that thronged the streets; the females that passed in review before me, tripping sportively along, resembled a procession of shadows, returning to their graves at the crowing of the cock.