Chapter II: Part 2

"But I magnanimously considered that there is a kind of treason
in inoculating one's self from the universal fear and sorrow,
and thinking one's idle thoughts in the dread time of civil
war; and could a man be so cold and hard-hearted, he would
better deserve to be sent to Fort Warren than many who have
found their way thither on the score of violent but misdirected
sympathies.

"I remember the touching rebuke administered by King Charles to
that rural squire, the echo of whose hunting-horn came to the
poor monarch's ear on the morning before a battle, where the
sovereignty and constitution of England were at stake. So I
gave myself up to reading newspapers, and listening to the
click of the telegraph, like other people, until after a great
many months of such pastime, it grew so abominably irksome that
I determined to look a little more closely at matters with my
own eyes."

It was in the early days of March that Hawthorne, in company with his friend and publisher, Wm. D. Ticknor, left Boston on a visit to Washington and the seat of war, then in its immediate vicinity.

The sketches of natural scenery are touched with the same pencil that gave us the charming picture of daily life at the Old Manse.

It was in New York that the travellers had the first clear intimation of the unnatural order of things consequent on a state of civil war. Here they found a rather prominent display of military goods at the shop windows--such as swords, with gilded scabbards and trappings, epaulettes, carbines, revolvers, and sometimes a great iron cannon at the edge of the pavement, as if Mars had dropped one of his pocket-pistols there while hurrying to the field.

As railway companions, they had now and then a volunteer in his French-gray great coat, returning from furlough, or a new-made officer travelling to join his regiment in his new-made uniform, which was perhaps all of the military character that he had about him; but proud of his eagle buttons, and likely enough to, do them honor before the gilt should be wholly dimmed.

The country, in short, so far as bustle and movement went, was more quiet than in ordinary times, because so large a proportion of its restless elements had been drawn towards the seat of conflict.

But the air was full of a vague disturbance.

The author's patriotic alarm seems to have been especially excited by the host of embryo warriors that filled the cars and thronged the stations all along the journey. One cause of this terror will seem to us now all the more amusing because there are not wanting those who will doubtless honestly believe that in giving it expression he wrote with something of prophetic unction:--

"One terrible idea occurs in reference to this matter. Even
supposing the war should end to-morrow, and the army melt into
the mass of the population within the year, what an
incalculable preponderance will there be of military titles and
pretentions for at least half a century to come! Every country
neighborhood will have its general or two, its three or four
colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without
end--besides noncommissioned officers and privates, more than
the recruiting officers ever knew of,--all with their campaign
stories which will become the staple of fireside talk
forevermore.

"Military merit, or rather, since that is not so readily
estimated, military notoriety, will be the measure of all
claims to civil distinction.

"One bullet-headed general will succeed another in the
presidential chair; and veterans will hold the offices at home
and abroad, and sit in Congress and the State Legislature, and
fill all the avenues of public life. And yet I do not speak of
this deprecatingly, since, very likely, it may substitute
something more real and genuine, instead of the many shams on
which men have heretofore founded their claims to public
regard; but it behooves civilians to consider their wretched
prospects in the future, and assume the military button before
it is too late."

The day of their arrival in Washington was the date of McClellan's historic movement on Manassas:--

"On the very day of our arrival sixty thousand men had crossed
the Potomac on their march towards Manassas; and almost with
their first steps into the Virginia mud, the phantasmagory of a
countless host and impregnable ramparts, before which they had
so long remained quiescent, dissolved quite away.

"It was as if General McClellan had thrust his sword into a
gigantic enemy, and, beholding him suddenly collapse, had
discovered to himself and the world that he had merely
punctured an enormously swollen bladder.

"There are instances of a similar character in old romances,
where great armies are long kept at bay by the arts of the
necromancers, who build airy towers and battlements, and
muster warriors of terrible aspect, and thus feign a defence of
seeming impregnability, until some bolder champion of the
besiegers dashes forward to try an encounter with the foremost
foeman, and finds him melt away in the death-grapple. With such
heroic adventures let the march upon Manassas be hereafter
reckoned.

"The whole business, though connected with the destinies of a
nation, takes inevitably a tinge of the ludicrous.

"The vast preparation of men and warlike material,--the
majestic patience and docility,--with which the people waited
through those weary and dreary months,--the martial skill,
courage, and caution, with which our movement was ultimately
made,--and at last the shock with which we were brought
suddenly up against nothing at all!"

It is in dealing with ponderous and awful blunders like this that the satiric power of the writer finds its favorite field of action.

It is not strange that, in those excited times of bitterness and strife, certain genuine but shallow souls should have counted it little short of treason to extract anything like fun from an episode which for us, in the day of it, was full of very solemn mortification. In this sketch, as indeed all through his works, it is in the delineation of individual character--in the analysis of motives--that Hawthorne's peculiar and amazing power is especially manifest, intermingled withal with a certain droll self-distrust and deprecation of adverse criticism, to which he has here given expression in a series of foot-notes, ostensibly from the editor's pen, but written in fact by the author himself.

The mixture of candor and apologetic self-disapproval in these addenda has a sufficiently odd effect, intermingled as it is with the utmost freedom of comment and criticism.

Prominent generals, cabinet ministers, and even the President himself, are dealt with in a vein of satiric candor, but with a pervasive spirit of good-nature evident enough and of sufficient breadth to disarm even official sensitiveness of anything like rancor.

Whatever personal descriptions the author may have meditated, or accomplished and afterward suppressed, the only full-length portrait he has given us is that of McClellan, of all the deeper interest and value now that both these famous Americans are numbered with the dead.

His impressions of President Lincoln seemed colored with a trace of prejudice, which, however unjust and unfortunate it may appear to us now, was really only the inevitable consequence of the wide intellectual gulf that yawned between those two men, both of positive character, and with tastes and sympathies the most radically opposite. But despite this unavoidable repulsion, Hawthorne's keen, resistless insight did not fail to penetrate the wonderful purity and simplicity of Lincoln's character. In a final word he does him ample justice:--

"He is evidently a man of keen faculties, and, what is still
more to the purpose, of powerful character.

"As to his integrity, the people have that intuition of it
which is never deceived. Before he actually entered upon his
great office, and for a considerable time afterwards, there is
no reason to suppose that he adequately estimated the gigantic
task about to be imposed upon him, or, at least, had any
distinct idea how it was to be managed; and I presume there may
have been more than one veteran politician to propose to
himself to take the power out of President Lincoln's hands into
his own, leaving our honest friend only the public
responsibility for the good or ill success of the career. The
extremely imperfect development of his statesmanly qualities at
that period may have justified such designs. But the President
is teachable by events, and has now spent a year in a very
arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind, capable of
much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and
activities than those of his early life; and if he came to
Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed
himself into as good a statesman (to speak modestly) as his
prime minister."

So long as a general's sword is seemingly invincible, and the uniformity of his success silences even the cavillings of envy,--that most persistent of all the unlovely emotions,--just so long he may safely count on a unanimity of public approval. But let disaster befall, and, justly or otherwise, it matters little which, the voices just now most vociferous for coronation, bellow the loudest for crucifixion! Few of our commanders in the late war had bitterer evidence of this than McClellan. Idolized while victorious, he was vituperated with corresponding violence the instant fortune showed signs of wavering in her fidelity. At this distance from those stirring times we can easily perceive that the idolatry and the abuse were alike unjust and even ridiculous; the same wisdom that pronounces it unsafe to praise a man until death has set the seal to his earthly reputation, deems it no less a folly to bestow adulation or excessive blame on a military commander before the end of his campaigns. To his brief estimate of McClellan's character and qualifications for his post of vast responsibility, our author brought an admirable coolness of judgment, and that wonderful insight into men and motives so seldom at fault. Keenly alive to the ridiculousness of the attack on Manassas, and declaring that "no rebel artillery has played upon us with such overwhelming effect," he was capable, with a fairness sufficiently amazing in any critic of those days, of doing full justice to the general's indubitable ability and patriotism. He closes his sketch of McClellan, by no means the least valuable part of the article we are considering, with this decided expression of opinion: "I shall not give up my faith in his soldiership until he is defeated, nor in his courage and integrity even then."

An odd peculiarity of Hawthorne's mind was the incertitude--I use this vile word in lack of a better at the moment--that seemed at times to invest his reasoning powers with a sort of Indian summer haziness.

This idiosyncrasy had a striking exemplification when our travellers met "a party of contrabands escaping out of the mysterious depths of Secessia."

"They were unlike the specimens of their race whom we are
accustomed to see at the North, and, in my judgment, were far
more agreeable.

"So rudely were they attired,--as if their garb had grown upon
them spontaneously,--so picturesquely natural in manners, and
wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite
polished away from the Northern black man), that they seemed a
kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human, but
perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fauns and rustic deities
of olden times. I wonder if I shall excite anybody's wrath by
saying this?

"It is no great matter at all events. I felt most kindly
towards the poor fugitives, but knew not precisely what to wish
in their behalf, nor in the least how to help them. For the
sake of the manhood which is latent in them, I would not have
turned them back; but I should have felt almost as reluctant on
their own account to hasten them forward to the strangers'
land; and I think my prevalent idea was that, whoever may be
benefited by the results of this war, it will not be the
present generation of negroes, the childhood of whose race has
now gone forever, and who must henceforth fight a hard battle
with the world on very unequal terms. On behalf of my own race,
I am glad, and can only hope that an inscrutable Providence
means good to both parties."

The whimsical feature in Hawthorne's character to which we have alluded, is thus noticed by an intimate and valued friend of the great author:--

"Nobody disliked slavery more cordially than he did; and yet
the difficulty of what was to be done with the slaves weighed
constantly upon his mind. He told me once that while he had
been consul at Liverpool a vessel arrived there with a number
of negro sailors, who had been brought from slave States, and
would, of course, be enslaved on their return. He fancied that
he ought to inform the men of the fact, but then he was stopped
by the reflection--who was to provide for them if they became
free? and, as he said with a sigh, 'While I was thinking, the
vessel sailed.' So I recollect, on the old battlefield of
Manassas, on which I strolled in company with Hawthorne,
meeting a batch of runaway slaves--weary, footsore, wretched,
and helpless beyond conception; we gave them food and wine,
some small sums of money, and got them a lift upon a train
going northward; but not long afterwards Hawthorne turned to me
with the remark, 'I am not sure that we were doing right, after
all. How can those poor beings find food and shelter away from
home?'

"Thus this ingrained and inherent doubt incapacitated him from
following any course vigorously.

"He thought on the whole that Wendell Phillips and Lloyd
Garrison and the abolitionists were in the right, but then he
was never quite certain that they were not in the wrong after
all; so that his advocacy of their cause was of a very
uncertain character."

There is a constant temptation to transcend proper limits in quoting from this most characteristic production of our great author.

It was my purpose simply to recall to the minds of readers an article whose authorship was scarcely known at the time of its appearance (in the July of 1862), and which has never been included in its writer's collected works.

Nothing in Hawthorne's books--not even excepting "Twice-Told Tales"--is more suggestive and eloquent of the man and the author.

The same matchless purity of style, with never a sophomoric flight nor a tinge of dulness; replete with subtle humor, and an irony whose tempered edge scarcely wounds by reason of the attendant richness of good nature that "steals away its sharpness"; as in the same soil that nourishes the keen, aggressive nettle, is always found a certain herb of healing potency. I cannot refrain from giving our readers some passages near the close. They are descriptive of certain guests at Willard's Hotel, in Washington, where the travellers lived during their stay at the Capital.

This portion of Hawthorne's last magazine article recalls forcibly passages in the first of his published stories, "The Gray Champion."

"It is curious to observe what antiquated figures and costumes
sometimes make their appearance at Willard's. You meet elderly
men with frilled shirt-fronts, for example, the fashion of
which adornment passed away from among the people of this world
half a century ago.

"It is as if one of Stuart's portraits were walking abroad.

"I see no way of accounting for this, except that the troubles
of the times, the impiety of traitors, and the peril of our
sacred Union and Constitution have disturbed in their honored
graves, some of the venerable fathers of the country, and
summoned them forth to protest against the meditated and
half-accomplished sacrilege.

"If it be so, their wonted fires are not altogether
extinguished in their ashes,--in their throats, I might rather
say,--for I beheld one of these excellent old men quaffing such
a horn of Bourbon whiskey as a toper of the present century
would be loath to venture upon.

"But, really, one would be glad to know where these strange
figures come from.

"It shows, at any rate, how many remote, decaying villages and
country neighborhoods of the North, and forest nooks of the
West, and old mansion houses in cities, are shaken by the
tremor of our native soil, so that men long hidden in
retirement put on the garments of their youth and hurry out to
inquire what is the matter.

"The old men whom we see here have generally more marked faces
than the young ones, and naturally enough; since it must be an
extraordinary vigor and venerability of life that can overcome
the rusty sloth of age, and keep the senior flexible enough to
take an interest in new things; whereas, hundreds of
commonplace young men come hither to stare with eyes of vacant
wonder, and with vague hopes of finding out what they are fit
for. And this war (we may say so much in its favor) has been
the means of discovering that important secret to not a few."

* * * * *

The writer remembers the vivid and untiring pleasure with which, when a child, he read and re-read that marvellous book for little people, "Grandfather's Arm Chair." It opened to him a new world of poetry and beauty--a revelation which close and severest study of the great author's mind and character, as developed in his maturer works, has but made broader and deeper.

With a grateful memory of the first, I write these few lines to recall almost the latest of Hawthorne's writings; the very last indeed, save the charming fragment that gave to the world of letters "Little Pansy"--"The sweetest child," says Alexander Smith, "in English literature."

I cannot close this brief and cursory notice more appropriately than in the words of a dear friend and appreciative admirer of our author, James Russell Lowell:--

"This now 'sacred and happy spirit' was cruelly misunderstood
among men. There were those who would have taken him away from
his proper and peculiar sphere, in which he has done more for
the true fame of his country than any other man, and made him a
politician and reformer.

"Even the faithfulness of his friendships was turned into
reproach.

"Him in whom New England was embodied as never before, making a
part of every fibre of his soul, we have heard charged with
want of patriotism.

"There were certain things and certain men with whom his
essentially aristocratic nature could not sympathize, but he
was American to the core. Just after Bull Run he wrote to a
friend, 'If the event of this day has left the people of the
North in the same grim and bloody mood in which it has left me,
it will be a costly victory to the South.'

"But it is unworthy of this noble man to defend him from
imputations which never touched him. As the years go by, his
countrymen will grow more and more proud of him, more and more
satisfied that it is, after all, something considerable to be
only a genius."

ON HOOSAC MOUNTAIN.

BY EDWARD D. GUILD.

One day, when all the city street
Lay sultry in the summer heat,
I stood on Hoosac's rocky crest,
And drank a draught of joy and rest.

The bracing Berkshire breezes blew
Across the hills, and sweeping through
The grateful valleys, gently fanned
The sun-scorched brow of Greylock grand.

From off the cragged hills Taghkonic,
High o'er the river Housatonic,
An eagle in his strength was soaring,
The paltry earth beneath ignoring.

Swift did his wings his will obey;
Straight north by east he coursed his way;
Proudly he took his fearless flight,
Toward fair Monadnock's hazy height.

Then on this rugged mountain wall,
A deeper silence seemed to fall:
Over this road, though broad and wide,
No traveller was seen to ride.

Only in vision rumbled by
A creaking coach with driver high,
Who cracked his whip, and rang his cheers--
Echoes they were of other years.

A group of graves were clustered here;
The wind wailed o'er them wild and drear:--
Could souls rise higher to the Light
When soaring from this mountain height?

And as I mused, the twilight fell:
I heard a distant evening bell;
And in the valley far below,
I heard the home-bound cattle low.

Far down where winds the Deerfield stream,
I saw a light,--a sudden gleam,
As up the narrow river riding
The Western train came swiftly gliding.

Then full to Hoosac's height it came,
When, with a sudden flare of flame,
Boldly the barrier it defied
And plunged into the mountain side.

The train was lost to sound and sight,
But still I knew it kept its flight:
I marked its subterranean way;--
Below the little graveyard lay.

Ah! trav'ller, through this cavern deep,
Fast in thy thoughts or book asleep,
Dost know that high above thy head
There rest the ashes of the dead?

A VERITABLE TRADER.

BY A. T. S.

A little remote from the centre of a village, on that strip of seacoast in the southeastern part of New Hampshire, lived a self-made trader, Joshua Jackson. He occupied a small, unpainted house, two stories in front, with the roof sloping down at the back part to one story. In the rear was the barn, with its generous red door, a well with its long "sweep," a pig-pen, and a hen-pen; but the hens seemed equally or more at home in the barn, with liberty of the yard, and sometimes they took a peep of curiosity into the back entry of the house.

Here, with his mother, lived Joshua Jackson, familiarly known as "Uncle Josh." It is a kind instinct which makes humanity in the rural districts claim, as uncle or aunt, any single man or woman who is left one side of the common lot of marriage and its ties. It is a relationship accepted in silent, good-natured consent on both sides. It was difficult to think of Uncle Josh as ever having been young. His hair, his complexion, his eyes, and even his coat, all seemed nearly of a color--a kind of snuff-colored red. He had a limping, rolling gait, affected by some infirmity of lameness which had, perhaps, prevented him from engaging in farming or fishing, which employed most men of the village; so he went into trade.

One of the "fore rooms," so called, of the house was his shop; the floor was of immaculate neatness, and carefully sanded every morning. On one side stood a cluster of barrels, one empty barrel surmounted by a board, exactly a yard long, the edge notched for the quarters and inches. This was his counter, and held a clumsy pair of scales. On the other side was a rude table containing boxes of cotton cloth, cambrics or checked goods, sewing cotton, buttons, thimbles, scissors, jack-knives, needles, and pins. On the mantel-shelf stood a pile of white, blue-edged plates, and mugs, and pitchers, from which projected sticks of red and white candy, like miniature barber's poles, and heaps of "gibraltars," hard and solid, sweet and brittle, and honest. Every child knew that they were a cent apiece, and thought them worth it.

No errand was half as welcome as one to Uncle Josh, when they might take an egg and get a skein of cotton. Sometimes he dived down into a cask of raisins as he passed by it, and filled the hand of the waiting messenger when he gave her whatever she came for, and took her money. Uncle Josh made no charges; he went on the cash system. He would barter, but he kept no running accounts with any one. The youngest child might go to him with the same certainty of right measure and weight as the shrewdest adult. One bright-faced little girl, who used to come often into his store, neatly dressed in her high-necked tier, and cape-bonnet, seemed to be a great favorite with him. He would sometimes say, half aside, that she was "pooty as a queen," although why the sturdy republican should make that comparison is a mystery. One day he stood at the open door, wistfully watching her as she walked off with her light, elastic step, and his mother, who had come in from the back room, answered to his unspoken thought, "Yes, she does, look a sight as Liza used to." The one woman whom others had connected with the idea of Uncle Josh's marrying had been dead long ago. It was said he had meant to ask her to be his wife when he should have laid by a certain sum of money, but the shy and reticent man suddenly found her "spoken for," as the villagers termed it, by the mate of a vessel. She died of consumption, unmarried. Uncle Josh never referred to this passage in his life, but his mother knew his mind, and why his words grew fewer than ever. The little Molly reproduced the soft hazel eyes and the trim air he so well remembered in her aunt.

Uncle Josh had a way of calling all strangers "furiners." A pale-faced girl who was boarding at the seashore for her health was delighted to be sent by her hostess, or any of the family, on an errand to the queer, quaint, old store, kept by "the funny old man." "You're a furiner, I guess," he said to her one day. "No, indeed, sir," she answered quickly, with an indignant blush, "I am not a foreigner. I came from Rochester, New York." "Why! such a long piece off, poor child, poor child," he muttered, as he went to a mug and took out a bright red sugar heart, and pressed it in her hand. "Ain't you dreadful homesick to live so fur?" "Oh, no; my home is very pleasant, and my father and mother are travelling; but they left me here because I have not been strong since I had the fever, and the doctor said I must bathe every day in the ocean. I have nice times. They keep cows where I board, and let me milk them a little sometimes. I am going to stay all summer." "Yes, yes; there are getting to be a great many furiners here in the summer." "What did Uncle Josh mean?" she asked on her return to the house; "did he take me for an Irish or a German girl? He asked if I was a foreigner." "Oh, he meant a stranger here in the village--some one not born here. He always calls 'em so. A good many folks do."

When Uncle Josh first went to Boston to buy his stock in trade, it was said that a merchant of whom he made large purchases, thought he did not know about trusting so queer and shabby looking a customer,--he should have to require good security. To his surprise, the countryman looked at the amount, unbuttoned his coat, and, from an ample old pocket-book he counted off his money; then from the depths of his pantaloon's pocket he brought up a round piece of leather twisted together for fastening, and from this he counted the exact change. Then he directed how the goods should be sent to him by such a schooner at a certain wharf. "Thank you, Mr. Jackson," said the merchant; "I hope we shall always be able to accommodate you. You prefer to pay down now, I see; but if you would like to have your bill remain awhile on credit at any time, we shall be happy to trust you." "It is very kind in you, but I don't trade on promises. 'Tain't my way. I thank ye all the same."

One day Uncle Josh happened to be in a merchant's store when the head of the establishment was absent. The clerk who waited on him had the pertness and superior airs of youth, sometimes seen even fifty years ago. He thought it fine fun to chaff the old countryman so shabbily dressed, and who drawled his words, and seemed so heavy and lumbering in his movements. As his customer said he guessed he would take so much of one thing, and then of another, the clerk said, "You are running up quite an account, it seems to me. Dipping in pretty deep for a man like you, hey?" "Perhaps I am," answered the old man; "I'll let 'em go," and walked out of the store. Another clerk who had finished business with a customer, came forward, and said to his fellow-clerk, "What made Mr. Jackson go off so suddenly?" "Who? That old cove? I rather think he was miffed at something I said about his dipping in deep. He didn't look as if he could afford a mouse-trap." "He? why, he's worth his weight in gold--always money down on the spot. If you've offended him, the governor'll be in your hair, I can tell you." "Goodness!" cried the terrified clerk, "I'll go after him, and bring him back," and off he started in quick pursuit. He could easily distinguish the rusty-looking suit, and limping, sidelong gait, even among the crowd of passengers on the sidewalk. When he had nearly overtaken him, he called out, "Here, sir, Mr. Jackson! Please stop," but the countryman still continued to move on at his slow pace. The clerk came up to him, and touched his hat, saying, "Please excuse me, Mr. Jackson. I am sure I didn't mean anything. I hope you will go back to the store, and let us wait on you. I am sure Mr. ---- would be so sorry to miss your custom. I hope you will excuse--" "You can go back to the store, young man," answered Mr. Jackson, "and tell your master I don't trade on excuses."

When the honest old man was gathered to his fathers, those who had known him in trade missed him. He always recognized a good article, and was willing to pay a fair price for it. He believed in a system of just equivalents in all business; he was exact to the smallest fraction, but not mean. He was simple, upright, honest, in all his dealings, never using his shrewdness to the disadvantage of his fellow-men.

LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

BY OLIVE E. DANA.

This is an age of biography. We have the two-volumed "Lives and Letters," and the brief and popular biography, with many of varying length and value between the two. And the contents of these two are outlined for us, again and again, in magazines and newspaper sketches. The histories of famous men and women are told and retold. It is the public's own fault if there is not a more general interest in, and a better knowledge of, the work of the notable characters of the century than ever before. This implies, also, a certain familiarity with the great movements of reform and philanthropy, and with the literature of the time. Some, however, who had a large share in the noblest work of this century, are less known, and less brought into notice, than we should expect. Among such is Mrs. L. M. Child. Her letters, published in 1880, were prefaced by a brief memorial sketch by the poet Whittier, and contained in an appendix the tribute of Wendell Phillips. An account of her life-work, written by Susan Coolidge, appeared in the "Famous Women" series. But her life, in many aspects, might profitably have the attention of this younger generation, who know little either of her antislavery work or of her literary attainments or fame. In both these departments her work seems like that of a pioneer. She helped to clear the way for the antislavery leaders,--Garrison and Higginson, Curtis and Lowell and Whittier. And in a similar manner she led the way into those paths where, for two or three decades, the woman-author has been so conspicuously advancing,--where her success has been so brilliant and varied. As to her literary genius, in the words of Whittier, "It is not too much to say that half a century ago she was the most popular literary woman in the United States." And again, "It is not exaggeration to say that no man or woman of that period rendered more substantial service to the cause of freedom, or made such a doing it." And when we add that her benevolence and 'great renunciation' in philanthropy--unobtrusive as they were--give her a valid claim to lasting remembrance, that the originality, insight, and force of character manifest in her letters, place them among the most valuable and suggestive of the letters of women, and that her truth, beneficence, and devotion would have made her life and character memorable if she had not written a line, we have stated only the barest truth; yet reason sufficient, why we of this generation should know more of her life and genius.

Lydia Maria Francis, afterwards Mrs. Child, was born in Medford, Mass., 1802. Her education was obtained in her native town, with the advantage of only one term in a private seminary. Her first book, "Hobomok," appeared in 1821, followed in 1823 by another novel, "The Rebels." These gave her a good degree of popularity. In 1827 she established "The Juvenile Miscellany," "pioneer to a long line of children's magazines." In 1828 she was married to David Lee Child, and they made their home in Boston. Within a very few years she wrote and published "The Frugal Housewife," "The Mother's Book," "The Girl's Own Book," "The History of Women," and the "Biographies of Good Wives."

Then, while all around her were heard the murmurs of popular praise and approval, and while in addition to the appreciation of countless humbler readers, she was winning commendation from the highest literary authorities,--in 1833 she "startled the country by the publication of her noble 'Appeal in behalf of that class of Americans called Africans.'" Mr. Whittier says: "It is quite impossible for any one of the present generation to imagine the popular surprise and indignation which the book called forth, or how entirely its author cut herself off from the favor and sympathy of a large number of those who had previously delighted to do her honor." And he continues: "Social and literary circles, which had been proud of her presence, closed their doors against her. The sale of her books, the subscriptions to her magazine, fell off to a ruinous extent. She knew all she was hazarding, and made the great sacrifice, prepared for all the consequences which followed."

She said in the preface: "I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken, but though I expect ridicule and censure, I do not fear them. A few years hence the opinion of the world will be a matter in which I have not even the most transient interest, but this book will be abroad on its mission of humanity, long after the hand that wrote it is mingling with the dust. Should it be the means of advancing, even one single hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness for all Rothschild's wealth or Sir Walter's fame." "Thenceforward," says Mr. Whittier again, "her life was a battle, a constant rowing hard against the stream of popular prejudice and hatred. And through it all, pecuniary privations, loss of friends and position, the painfulness of being suddenly thrust from the still air of delightful studies into the bitterest and sternest controversy of the age, she bore herself with patience, fortitude, and unshaken reliance on the justice and ultimate triumph of the cause she had espoused."

In a short time thereafter she had published four more antislavery books or pamphlets. "Philothia," a romance whose scene is laid in ancient Greece, appeared in 1836. For eight years, dating from 1844, Mr. and Mrs. Childs were joint-editors of "The Anti-Slavery Standard," published in New York. She had a room in the house of Isaac Hopper,--"a house where disinterestedness and noble labor were as daily breath." It was during this time that she wrote her "Letters from New York," under which title her letters to "The Boston Courier" appeared in a volume having an enormous sale. In 1852, having given up the editorship of "The Standard," Mrs. Child said: "We made a humble home in Wayland, Mass., where we spent twenty-two pleasant years entirely alone, without any domestic; mutually serving each other, and dependent on each other for intellectual companionship."

During those years she was deeply and actively interested in the progress of the Civil War. Its premonitions roused her. She warmly defended the cause of John Brown, sending him a letter offering to go nurse him in prison. Very soon she was deep in every sort of undertaking,--collecting funds, collecting supplies, urging Whittier to the writing of patriotic songs, sewing, knitting, quilting. Her intense interest was manifested by generous contributions of money, how earned or saved, she only knew. She said, "Nobles or princes cannot invent any pleasure equal to earning with one hand and giving with the other." Twenty dollars at one time, two hundred at another, and perhaps four hundred at yet another, she gave. During these years, too, she was writing and compiling other books,--"The Progress of Religious Ideas," "Looking towards Sunset," and "A Romance of the Republic." It was in the last of these peaceful years that she wrote: "David and I are growing old. He will be eighty in three weeks, and I was seventy-two last February. But we keep young in our feelings. We are, in fact, like two old children; as much interested as ever in the birds and wild flowers, and with sympathies as lively as ever in all that concerns the welfare of the world. Our habitual mood is serene and cheerful."

Only a few months after these words were written, her husband died, and she left the place so full of memories of him to find a home elsewhere. Of these later years it was said: "She lived among a singularly peaceful and intelligent community as one of themselves, industrious, wise, and happy; with a frugality whose motive of wide benevolence was in itself a homily and a benediction." She died in 1880.

BONNIE HAREBELLS.

BY ANNA B. BENSEL.

Bonnie harebells, bonnie harebells,
Ring, oh, ring!
Ring across the listening twilight
While the fairies sing.

Bonnie harebells, bonnie harebells,
My love greet!
Let her hear you ringing softly
At her very feet.

Bonnie harebells, bonnie harebells,
Sound out clear;
Tell a little, watching maiden
I am very near.

Bonnie harebells, bonnie harebells,
Ring, oh, ring!
All the world with silence over
Waits listening.

MYTH IN AMERICAN COINAGE.

BY ISAAC BASSETT CHOATE.

The worship of "the almighty dollar" is of no recent origin, provided it be the case that the dollar is represented in gold. This worship forms no special _cultus_ in the religions of the world. It is a survival from prehistoric times, and is intimately connected with the earliest forms of nature-worship. The estimate in which gold has been held has always been out of all proportion to its utility, its scarcity, or the difficulty of mining it. There have been times when civilized man had a comparatively far more abundant supply of gold than he has at present, but this circumstance did not avail to depreciate the metal. There were long ages of an incipient civilization, during which gold flooded the markets of the world as compared with iron, but this did not affect the relations between the nobler and the baser article of merchandise. Gold was all the time held at a valuation far above what it would have received from its importance to mankind in the useful arts. It was prized as amber was prized, and the two substances were devoted to quite similar uses. They were employed for the decoration of temples and shrines, and were worn for personal ornament. But the wearing of such ornament had its origin in sentiments which may be regarded as strictly religious. Beads and rings were originally amulets to protect the wearer against invisible inimical powers, as they were talismans to confer upon their possessor supernatural gifts. We can get no distinct view back of this custom in time, but we may feel well assured that when gold had acquired such use, nature-worship had advanced far into the stage of symbolism. It was not the metal itself that was the object of worship. That object gold typified and figured to the devout mind.

To discover what property it was that gave this metal its early preference, it will be necessary to trace the survival of similar views and feelings farther than we have ourselves consciously prolonged them. It is to be observed that among the Turks and other Oriental people, amber and yellow gems like the topaz, still enjoy a pre-eminence in popular favor. These substances are still supposed to possess magical power always beneficent. Among the Chinese, yellow is both sacred and it is associated with the dignity of imperial rank. Yellow is the color of the royal standard, and a yellow sash distinguishes a member of the royal family. Robes of state are of the same color. And this appropriation of yellow to certain sacred or governmental uses is not confined to China. It is common through the East. The farther back we trace the idea of special sacredness in color, the more exclusively do we see this confined to yellow. This was long saved from vulgar uses and associations. It had a significance to the ancients, such as it does not have to us. There was a fitness in their decorating the temples and the statues of the gods with gold, and silver, and ivory, and amber, and gems. These offerings symbolized light, and light stood for the happier destinies of man,--for the milder and gentler influences which lead to good; while darkness typified malignant powers of evil. There was the same distinction conceived of between life and death. White victims were offered to the gods of Olympus, while for sacrifice to the gods of the under-world black victims were selected.

Gold shines with the brightest and the warmest glow of any of the metals, and its brilliancy and lustre are not tarnished by corrosion. To the Oriental fancy it typified the genial light of day. To the fire-worshipper it was a fit emblem of his faith. Fire was originally sacred, perhaps, only as the representative of the sun; and this luminary was later spiritualized in the idea of Apollo. Gold was sacred as far as this worship was spread, from India to the North of Europe, and the great demand for it for sacred uses gave the metal much of its preciousness in the markets of the world. It was worn by the living and was buried with the dead; so that if humanity had not refined its conception of the divine, it would have come to be the case at length that every particle of gold in the soil would have had mortal ashes sleeping beside it.

Gold and silver were rendered sacred and precious in early times by being devoted to purposes of worship. The temples were the safe places of deposit, and in these were hoarded the treasures of the world. Partly from this circumstance it became the case that when gold and silver were first coined, the temples were the mints, and the earliest mint-masters were the priests. Naturally, the devices stamped upon the coins issued under such auspices would be sacred emblems. We find them such from whatever source they came. There was sound policy in this course, as well as good reason for it. If coins were to circulate among people who had previously been accustomed to paying out and receiving the precious metals by actual weight, it was necessary to have the value of these pieces certified to in the most solemn manner. To this end the effigies of the gods, together with the tokens of their attributes and sacred offices, were stamped upon the coin. If we could trace coinage to its earliest use, perhaps to its origin, among the people who lived about the Ægean Sea, it would not be unreasonable to expect to find that at first gold coin was issued under the patronage of Apollo, that silver bore the stamp of Zeus, and that copper coins were dedicated to Aphrodite, as the nearest representative among Greek divinities of that Phoenician goddess who presided over trade in the ports and markets of the East. But among the coins that remain--and some of these are shown to be of early date, they are so rude in execution--we do not find this distinction kept. It is certain that at an early period the emblems of the several divinities were mixed, apparently with a view to giving a more weighty sanction to the stamp impressed upon the coin.

The earlier Greek coins were struck by hand. A single die was employed in the process, so that an impression of device or of legend appeared only on one side. The other side bore an indent which is known as the punch-mark. This mark is commonly a square figure divided into four smaller squares by lines resembling somewhat a right cross. It is the indent of the spike in the anvil on which the ball of metal was laid when being struck. Later, the coins were made thinner, and were struck with double dies. From that time both sides of the coin received an impression. The upper side continued to show the greatest care. As this side always bore the head of the god under whose auspices the coin was to be issued, it was called the obverse or face of the piece. The opposite side was the reverse. So long as coins continued to be struck by hand, there was no fixed relative position for the two impressions. Coins were always printed as though they were turned horizontally from left to right. They still continue to be so printed, and we go on in the practice of speaking of the reverse of coins, even when we are discussing those of our own coinage; but the fact is that ever since American coins were stamped in the mint the impressions on the two sides bear a certain fixed relation. In passing from the obverse of our coins to the examination of the opposite side, we do this by inverting the piece. That side would then properly be called the inverse of the coin, and it would, with equal propriety be printed directly beneath its obverse.

The shape of early coins is by no means uniform. There is one peculiarity of the coins of Boeotia and Macedonia, as well as of many colonies of these states, which is worthy of some attention. It may indicate how it came about that the round disk is now the prevailing form. The coins of these two Greek states in particular were for a long period concavo-convex disks, the convex side being in all instances the obverse. It has been suggested, by way of accounting for this form, that it secured a more perfect impression of the upper die, which always struck the obverse. It may be the case that a better impression was gained on that side, but an examination will show that the designer and engraver spared nothing of art or of skill upon the reverses. These are executed with a care and vigor equal to that of the obverse, and are struck with equal success. The concave shape preserved the reverse from wear, and made it an object for both artist and artisan to put good work on this side. It is more in accordance with the Greek way of looking at things, to account for this shape on other ground than that of expediency. It is more likely than otherwise, that this form is emblematic. The ancient buckler was of this form. Of such a figure was the escutcheon of these states. Boeotia adopted for hers the shield of Herakles, and Macedonia that of Ares. What tends strongly to confirm this view, that the buckler was the model for the coin, is the fact that for a long time Macedonian coins were finished upon the obverse, in imitation of the national shield. This is to be seen in the decoration of the border, even on coins that were struck long after Macedonia had become a Roman province. May it not be the case that the buckler served as model for the circular disk?

As Greek coins were issued under the sanction of some god, it was natural that they should go out from his temple bearing his effigy and the symbols of his worship. Apollo succeeded to the early worship paid the sun and fire. He was the god of light and beauty. In his honor gold coins should originally have been struck, and they should bear his emblems. It will be of service to see what some of these were. This god was, on the whole, beneficent, as the influences of the sun are kindly, but he inflicted plagues by shooting his poisoned arrows among the people, just as the heat of the sun engenders deadly fevers. We have retained a trace of the old feeling, as our language betrays where consciousness utterly fails. We attribute certain sudden attacks of illness to _sunstroke_. That word "stroke" brings vividly before us the smiting of the Greek camp on the plain before Troy. Representing the sun, as Apollo did, the head of this god often appears radiated upon coins, particularly upon the coins of Rhodes. This was as the poets were wont to describe him. Catullus alludes to his flashing eyes,--"_radiantibus oculis_." Tibullus speaks of him as this youth having his temples bound with sacred laurel--"_hic juvenis casta redimitus tempora lauro_" The use of the laurel was reserved to this god, and in times of primitive Greek and Roman piety it was allowed to men only whose successful general would celebrate a triumph. The palm-branch is also connected with the worship of this god, in allusion to the sacred palm-tree under which Leta gave birth to him and to Artemis. The rays, the laurel, and the palm are the symbols of Apollo upon our coins. Other nations have employed the bow, the lyre, and the tripod, with many more equally familiar symbols.

The coinage of silver belonged peculiarly to Zeus, the god of the thunderbolt. The question arises at once, Was there fancied a resemblance between the whiteness of this metal and dazzling brightness of the flash of lightning? However that question may be answered, there remains the fact that the thunderbolt was a symbol of the power of Zeus, and its figure uniformly accompanied the effigy of the god. Ovid speaks of Zeus as of one whose hand is armed with three-forked fires,--

_"Cui deutra trisulces
Ignibus armata est."_

It is worth while to give this emblem some little study. It is represented under three varieties of one general form. We first find it a bundle of flames wreathed closely together in the form of a double cone. It is then a token of peace. Zeus is always seated when bearing this, and it is held downward. Under its second form the thunderbolt consists of a similar double cone, only it is elongated and pointed. This cone is crossed obliquely by two zigzag flashes of lightning, terminating at either end in arrow-points. Later forms of this symbol have the forward end the same, but the other end is wrought into an ornamental and somewhat arborescent head. This form with the lightning flashes is always borne uplifted, and by the god standing in readiness to hurl the bolt. This is the form we are to look for in connection with the worship of Zeus. The third form is of rare occurrence in literature and art.