Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864», sayfa 9

"What is the matter, Williams?" asked the Judge, on his return home that afternoon.

"My gran'ther is dead, Sir; and I don't know where to bury him." This was the negro's quiet and serious answer.

"Dead?" ejaculates the Judge. "Why, I saw him only this morning, and had a smile from him!"

"That was his last smile, Sir. You can see it on his face yet. He went to heaven with that smile, we trust."

To heaven? a negro in heaven? If that is so, some of us, I suppose, will no longer wish to go there. Or do you imagine that you will have need of servants in paradise, and that that is what Christian niggers are for? Or do you believe that in the celestial congregations there will also be a place set aside for the colored brethren,—a glorified niggers' pew? You scowl; you don't like a joke upon so serious a subject? Hypocrite! do you see nothing but a joke here?

The Judge leaves everything and goes home with his coachman. Sure enough! there is the same smile he saw in the morning, frozen on the face of the corpse.

"Gently and late death came to him!" says Gingerford. "Would we could all die as happy! There is no occasion to mourn, my good woman."

"Bless the Lord, I don't mourn!" replied the old negress. "But I'm so brimful of thanks, I must cry for 't! He died a blessed ole Christian; an' he's gone straight to glory, if there's anything in the promises. He is free now, if he never was afore;—for, though they pretend there a'n't no slaves in this 'ere State, an' the law freed us years ago, seems to me there a'n't no r'al liberty for us, 'cept this!" She pointed at the corpse, then threw up her eyes and hands with an expression of devout and joyful gratitude. "He's gone where there a'n't no predijice agin color, bless the Lord! He's gone where all them that's been washed with the blood of Christ is all of one color in His sight!" Then turning to the Judge,—"And you'll git your reward, Sir, be sure o' that!"

"My reward?" And Gingerford, touched with genuine emotion, shook his head, sadly.

"Yes, Sir, your reward," repeated the old woman, tenderly arranging the sheet over the still breast, and still, folded hands of the corpse. "For makin' his last days happy,—for makin' his last minutes happy, I may say. That 'ere smile was for you, Sir. You was kinder to him 'n folks in gin'ral. He wa'n't used to 't. An' he felt it. An' he's gone to glory with the news on 't. An' it'll be sot down to your credit there, in the Big Book."

Where was the Judge's eloquence? He could not find words to frame a fitting reply to this ignorant black woman, whose emotion was so much deeper than any fine phrases of his could reach, and whose simple faith and gratitude overwhelmed him with the sudden conviction that he had never yet said anything to the purpose, in all his rhetorical defences of the down-trodden race. From that conviction came humility. Out of humility rose inspiration. Two days later his eloquence found tongue; and this was the occasion of it:—

The body of the old negro was to be buried. That he should be simply put into the ground, and nothing said, any more than as if he were a brute beast, did not seem befitting the obsequies of so old a man and so faithful a Christian. The family had natural feelings on that subject. They wanted to have a funeral sermon.

Now it so happened that there was to be another funeral in the village about that time. The old minister, had he been living, might have managed to attend both. But the young minister couldn't think of such a thing. The loveliest flower of maidenhood in his parish had been cut down. One of the first families had been bereaved. Day and night he must ponder and scribble to prepare a suitable discourse. And then, having exhausted spiritual grace in bedecking the tomb of the lovely, should he,—good gracious! could he descend from those heights of beauty and purity to the grave of a superannuated negro? Could divine oratory so descend?

 
"On that fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor"?
 

Ought the cup of consolation, which he extended to his best, his worthiest friends and parishioners, to be passed in the same hour to thick African lips?

Which questions were, of course, decided in the negative. There was another minister in the village, but he was sick. What should be done? To go wandering about the world in search of somebody to preach the funeral sermon seemed a hard case,—as Mr. Williams remarked to the Judge.

"Tell you what, Williams," said the Judge,—"don't give yourself any more trouble on that account. I'm not a minister, nor half good enough for one,"—he could afford to speak disparagingly of himself, the beautiful, gracious gentleman!—"but if you can't do any better, I'll be present and say a few words at the funeral."

"Thank you a thousand times!" said the grateful negro. "Couldn't be nothin' better 'n that! We never expected no such honor; an' if my ole gran'ther could have knowed you would speak to his funeral, he'd have been proud, Sir!"

"He was a simple-minded old soul!" replied the Judge, pleasantly. "And you're another, Williams! However, I am glad you are satisfied. So this difficulty is settled, too." For already one very serious difficulty had been arranged through this man's kindness.

Did I neglect to mention it,—how, when the old negro died, his family had no place to bury him? The rest of his race, dying before him, had been gathered to the mother's bosom in distant places: long lines of dusky ancestors in Africa; a few descendants in America,—here and there a grave among New-England hills. Only one, a child of Mr. Williams's, had died in Timberville, and been placed in the old burying-ground over yonder. But that was now closed against interments. And as for purchasing a lot in the new cemetery,—how could poor Mr. Williams ever hope to raise money to pay for it?

"Williams," said the Judge, "I own several lots there, and if you'll be a good boy, I'll make you a present of one."

Ah, Gingerford! Gingerford! was it pure benevolence that prompted the gift? Was the smile with which you afterwards related the circumstance to dear Mrs. Gingerford a smile of sincere satisfaction at having done a good action and witnessed the surprise and gratitude of your black coachman? Tell us, was it altogether an accident, with no tincture whatever of pleasant malice in it, that the lot you selected, out of several, to be the burial-place of negroes, lay side by side with the proud family-vault of your neighbor Frisbie?

The Judge was one of those cool heads, who, when they have received an injury, do not go raving of it up and down, but put it quietly aside, and keep their temper, and rest content to wait patiently, perhaps years, perhaps a lifetime, for the opportunity of a sudden and pat revenge. Indeed, I suppose he would have been well satisfied to answer Frisbie's spite with the nobler revenge of magnanimity and smiling forbearance, had not the said opportunity presented itself. It was a temptation not to be resisted. And he, the most philanthropical of men, proved himself capable of being also the most cruel.

There, in the choicest quarter of the cemetery, shone the white ancestral monuments of the Frisbies. Death, the leveller, had not, somehow, levelled them,—proud and pretentious even in their tombs. You felt, as you read the sculptured record of their names and virtues, that even their ashes were better than the ashes of common mortals. They rendered sacred not only the still inclosure where they lay, but all that beautiful sunny bank; so that nobody else had presumed to be buried near them, but a space of many square rods on either side was left still unappropriated,—until now, when, lo! here comes a black funeral, and the corpse of one who had been a slave in his day, to profane the soil!

Nor is this all, alas! There comes not one funeral procession only. The first has scarcely entered the cemetery, when a second arrives. Side by side the dead of this day are to be laid: our old friend the negro, and the lovely young lady we have mentioned,—even the fairest of Mr. Frisbie's own children.

For it is she. The sweetest of the faces Fessenden's saw that stormy night at the window, and yearned to be within the bright room where the fire, was,—that dear warm face is cold in yonder coffin which the afflicted family are attending to the tomb.

And Frisbie, as we have somewhere said, loved his children. And in the anguish of his bereavement he had not heeded the singular and somewhat humiliating fact that his daughter had issued from the portal of Time in company with one of his most despised tenants,—that, in the same hour, almost at the same moment, Death had summoned them, leading them together, as it were, one with his right hand, and one with his left, the way of all the world. So that here was a surprise for the proud and grief-smitten parent.

"What is all that, Stephen?" he demands, with sudden consternation.

"It seems to be another funeral, Sir. They're buryin' somebody next lot to yours."

"Who, who, Stephen?"

"I—I ruther guess it's the old nigger, Sir," says Stephen.

The mighty man is shaken. Wrath and sorrow and insulted affection convulse him for a moment. His face grows purple, then pale, and he struggles with his neckcloth, which is choking him. He sees the tall form of Gingerford at the grave, and knows what it is to wish to murder a man. Were those two Christian neighbors quite alone, in this solitude of the dead, I fear one of them would soon be a fit subject for a coroner's inquest and an epitaph. O pride and hatred! with what madness can you inspire a mortal man! O Fessenden's! bless thy stars that thou art not the only fool alive this day, nor the greatest!

Fessenden's walked alone to the funeral, talking by himself, and now and then laughing. Gentleman Bill thought his conduct indecorous, and reproved him for it.

"Gracious!" said the lad, "don't you see who I'm talkin' with?"

"No, Sir,—I can't say I see anybody, Sir."

"No?" exclaimed the astonished youth. "Why, it's the old man, goin' to his own funeral!"

This, you may say, was foolishness; but, oh, it was innocent and beautiful foolishness, compared with that of Frisbie and his sympathizers, when they discovered the negro burial, and felt that their mourning was too respectable to be the near companion of the mourning of those poor blacks, and that their beautiful dead was too precious to be laid in the earth beside their dead.

What could be done? Indignation and sorrow availed nothing. The tomb of the lovely was prepared, and it only remained to pity the affront to her ashes, as she was committed to the chill depths amid silence and choking tears. It is done; and the burial of the old negro is deferentially delayed until the more aristocratic rites are ended.

Gingerford set the example of standing with his hat off in the yellow sunshine and wintry air, with his noble head bowed low, while the last prayer was said at the maiden's sepulture. Then he lifted up his face, radiant; and the flashing and rainbow-spanned torrent of his eloquence broke forth. He had reserved his forces for this hour. He had not the Williams family and their friends alone for an audience, but many who had come to attend the young lady's funeral remained to hear the Judge. It was worth their while. Finely as he had discoursed at the hut of the negroes, before the corpse was brought out, that was scarcely the time, that was certainly not the place, for a crowning effort of his genius. But here, his larger audience, the open air, the blue heavens, the graves around, the burial of the young girl side by side with the old slave, all contributed to inspire him. Human brotherhood, universal love, the stern democracy of death, immortality,—these were his theme. Life, incrusted with conventionalities; Death, that strips them all away. This is the portal (pointing to the grave) at which the soul drops all its false incumbrances,—rank, riches, sorrow, shame. It enters naked into eternity. There worldly pride and arrogance have no place. There false judgment goes out like a sick man's night-lamp, in the morning light of truth. In the courts of God only spiritual distinctions prevail. That you were a lord in this life will be of no account there, where the humblest Christian love is preferred before the most brilliant selfishness,—where the master is degraded, and the servant is exalted. And so forth, and so forth; a brief, but eloquent address, of which it is to be regretted that no report exists.

Then came the prayer,—for the Judge had a gift that way too; and the tenderness and true feeling with which he spoke of the old negro and the wrongs of his race drew tears from many eyes. Then a hymn was sung,—those who had stayed to sneer joining their voices seriously with those of the lowly mourners.

A few days later, Mr. Williams had the remains of his child taken from the old burying-ground, and brought here, and laid beside the patriarch. And before spring, simple tombstones of white marble (at Gingerford's expense) marked the spot, and commemorated the circumstances of the old man's extreme age and early bondage.

And before spring, alas! three other graves were added to that sunny bank! One by one, all those fair children whom Fessenden's had seen in the warm room where the fire was had followed their sister to the tomb. So fast they followed that Mr. Frisbie had no time to move his family-vault from the degrading proximity of the negro graves. And Fessenden's still lived, an orphan, yet happy, in the family of blacks which had adopted him; while the parents of those children, who had loved them, were left alone in the costly house, desolate. Was it, as some supposed, a judgment upon Frisbie for his pride? I cannot tell. I only know, that, in the end, that pride was utterly broken,—and that, when the fine words of the young minister failed to console him, when sympathizing friends surrounded him, and Gingerford came to visit him, and they were reconciled, he turned from them all, and gratefully received hope and comfort from the lips of a humble old Christian who had nursed the last of his children in her days and nights of suffering, almost against his will.

That Christian? It was the old negro woman.

Early in the spring, Mr. Williams–But no more! Haven't we already prolonged our sketch to an intolerable length, considering the subject of it? Not a lover in it! and, of course, it is preposterous to think of making a readable story without one. Why didn't we make young Gingerford in love with—let's see—Miss Frisbie? and Miss Frisbie's brother (it would have required but a stroke of the pen to give her one) in love with—Creshy Williams? What melodramatic difficulties might have been built upon this foundation! And as for Fessenden's being a fool and a pauper, he should turn out to be the son of some proud man, either Gingerford or Frisbie. But it is too late now. We acknowledge our fatal mistake. Who cares for the fortunes of a miserable negro family? Who cares to know the future of Mr. Williams, or of any of his race?

Suffice it, then, to say, that, as for the Williamses, God has taken care of them in every trial,—turning even the wrath of enemies to their advantage, as we have seen; just as He will, no doubt, in His fatherly kindness, provide for that unhappy race which is now in the perilous crisis of its destiny, and concerning which so many, both its friends and enemies, are anxiously asking, "What will become of them?"

FORGOTTEN

 
In this dim shadow, where
She found the quiet which all tired hearts crave,
Now, without grief or care,
The wild bees murmur, and the blossoms wave,
And the forgetful air
Blows heedlessly across her grassy grave.
 
 
Yet, when she lived on earth,
She loved this leafy dell, and knew by name
All things of sylvan birth;
Squirrel and bird chirped welcome, when she came:
Yet now, in careless mirth,
They frisk, and build, and warble all the same.
 
 
From the great city near,
Wherein she toiled through life's incessant quest,
For weary year on year,
Come the far voices of its deep unrest,
To touch her dead, deaf ear,
And surge unechoed o'er her pulseless breast.
 
 
The hearts which clung to her
Have sought out other shrines, as all hearts must,
When Time, the comforter,
Has worn their grief out, and replaced their trust:
Not even neglect can stir
This little handful of forgotten dust.
 
 
Grass waves, and insects hum,
And then the snow blows bitterly across;
Strange footsteps go and come,
Breaking the dew-drops on the starry moss:
She lieth still and dumb,
And counts no longer any gain or loss.
 
 
Ah, well,—'t is better so;
Let the dust deepen as the years increase;
Of her who sleeps below
Let the name perish and the memory cease,
Since she has come to know
That which through life she vainly prayed for,—Peace!
 

WET-WEATHER WORK

BY A FARMER

VIII.—CONCLUSION

As I sit in my library-chair listening to the welcome drip from the eaves, I bethink me of the great host of English farm-teachers who in the last century wrote and wrought so well, and wonder why their precepts and their example should not have made a garden of that little British island. To say nothing of the inherited knowledge of such men as Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert, Hugh Platt, Markham, Lord Bacon, Hartlib, and the rest, there was Tull, who had blazed a new path between the turnip and the wheat-drills—to fortune; there was Lord Kames, who illustrated with rare good sense, and the daintiness of a man of letters, all the economies of a thrifty husbandry; Sir John Sinclair proved the wisdom of thorough culture upon tracts that almost covered counties; Bakewell (of Dishley)—that fine old farmer in breeches and top-boots, who received Russian princes and French marquises at his kitchen-fireside—demonstrated how fat might be laid on sheep or cattle for the handling of a butcher; in fact, he succeeded so far, that Dr. Parkinson once told Paley that the great breeder had "the power of fattening his sheep in whatever part of the body he chose, directing it to shoulder, leg, or neck, as he thought proper,—and this," continued Parkinson, "is the great problem of his art."

"It's a lie, Sir," said Paley,—"and that's the solution of it."

And yet Dr. Parkinson was very near the truth.

Besides Bakewell, there was Arthur Young, as we have seen, giving all England the benefit of agricultural comparisons by his admirable "Tours"; Lord Dundonald had brought his chemical knowledge to the aid of good husbandry; Abercrombie and Speechly and Marshall had written treatises on all that regarded good gardening. The nurseries of Tottenham Court Road, the parterres of Chelsea, and the stoves of the Yew Gardens were luxuriant witnesses of what the enterprising gardener might do.

Agriculture, too, had a certain dignity given to it by the fact that "Farmer George" (the King) had written his experiences for a journal of Arthur Young, the Duke of Bedford was one of the foremost advocates of improved farming, and Lord Townshend took a pride in his sobriquet of "Turnip Townshend."

Yet, for all this, at the opening of the present century, England was by no means a garden. Over more than half the kingdom, turnips, where sown at all, were sown broadcast. In four counties out of five, a bare fallow was deemed essential for the recuperation of cropped lands. Barley and oats were more often grown than wheat. Dibbling or drilling of grain, notwithstanding Platt and Jethro Tull, were still rare. The wet clay-lands had, for the most part, no drainage, save the open furrows which were as old as the teachings of Xenophon; indeed, it will hardly be credited, when I state that it is only so late as 1843 that a certain gardener, John Reade by name, at the Derby Show of the Royal Agricultural Society, exhibited certain cylindrical pipes, which he had formed by wrapping damp clay around a smooth billet of wood, and with which he "had been in the habit of draining the hot-beds of his master." A sagacious engineer who was present, and saw these, examined them closely, and, calling the attention of Earl Spencer (the eminent agriculturist) to them, said, "My Lord, with them I can drain all England."

It was not until about 1830 that the subsoil-plough of Mr. Smith of Deanston was first contrived for special work upon the lands of Perthshire. Notwithstanding all the brilliant successes of Bakewell, long-legged, raw-boned cattle were admired by the majority of British farmers at the opening of this century, and elephantine monsters of this description were dragged about England in vans for exhibition. It was only in 1798 that the "Smithfield Club" was inaugurated for the show of fat cattle, by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, Arthur Young, and others; and it was about the same period that young Jonas Webb (whose life has latterly been illustrated by a glowing chapter from Elihu Burritt) used to ride upon the Norfolk bucks bred by his grandfather, and, with a quick sense of discomfort from their sharp backs, vowed, that, when he "grew a man, he'd make better saddles for them"; and he did, as every one knows who has ever seen a good type of the Brabaham flock.

The Royal Agricultural Society dates from 1838. In 1835 Sir Robert Peel presented a farmers' club at Tamworth with "two iron ploughs of the best construction," and when he inquired after them and their work the following year, the report was that the wooden mould-board was better: "We tried 'em, but we be all of one mind, that the iron made the weeds grow." And I can recall a bright morning in January of 1845, when I made two bouts around a field in the middle of the best dairy-district of Devonshire, at the stilts of a plough so cumbrous and ineffective that a thrifty New-England farmer would have discarded it at sight. Nor can I omit, in this connection, to revive, so far as I may, the image of a small Devon farmer, who had lived, and I dare say will die, utterly ignorant of the instructions of Tull, or of the agricultural labors of Arthur Young: a short, wheezy, rotund figure of a man, with ruddy face,—fastening the hs in his talk most blunderingly,—driving over to the market-town every fair-day, with pretty samples of wheat or barley in his dog-cart,—believing in the royal family like a gospel,—limiting his reading to glances at the "Times" in the tap-room,—looking with an evil eye upon railways, (which, in that day, had not intruded farther than Exeter into his shire,)—distrusting terribly the spread of "eddication": it "doan't help the work-folk any; for, d' ye see, they've to keep a mind on their pleughing and craps; and as for the b'ys, the big uns must mind the beasts, and the little uns's got enough to do a-scaring the demed rooks. Gads! what hodds to them, please your Honor, what Darby is a-dooin' up in Lunnun, or what Lewis-Philup is a-dooin' with the Frenchers?" And the ruddy farmer-gentleman stirs his toddy afresh, lays his right leg caressingly over his left leg, admires his white-topped boots, and is the picture of British complacency. I hope he is living; I hope he stirs his toddy still in the tap-room of the inn by the pretty Erme River; but I hope that he has grown wiser as he has grown older, and that he has given over his wheezy curses at the engine as it hurtles past on the iron way to Plymouth and to Penzance.

The work was not all done for the agriculture and the agriculturist of England in the last century; it is hardly all done yet; it is doubtful if it will be done so as to close investigation and ripen method in our time. There was room for a corps of fresh workers at the opening of the present century; nor was such a corps lacking.

About the year 1808, a certain John Christian Curwen, Member of Parliament, and dating from Cumberland, wrote "Hints on Agricultural Subjects," a big octavo volume, in which he suggests the steaming of potatoes for horses, as a substitute for hay; but it does not appear that the suggestion was well received. To his credit, however, it may be said, that, in the same book, he urged the system of "soiling" cattle,—a system which even now needs its earnest expounders, and which would give full warrant for their loudest exhortation.

I notice, too, that, at about the same period, Dr. Beddoes, the friend and early patron of Sir Humphry Davy at the Pneumatic Institution of Bristol, wrote a book with the quaint title, "Good Advice to Husbandmen in Harvest, and for all those who labor in Hot Berths, and for others who will take it—in Warm Weather." And with the recollection of Davy's description of the Doctor in my mind,—"uncommonly short and fat,"²⁶—I have felt a great interest in seeing what such a man should have to say upon harvest-heats; but his book, so far as I know, is not to be found in America.

A certain John Harding, of St. James Street, London, published, in 1809, a tract upon "The Use of Sugar in Feeding Cattle," in which were set forth sundry experiments which went to show how bullocks had been fattened on molasses, and had been rewarded with a premium. I am indebted for all knowledge of this anomalous tractate to the "Agricultural Biography" of Mr. Donaldson, who seems disposed to give a sheltering wing to the curious theory broached, and discourses upon it with a lucidity and coherence worthy of a state-paper. I must be permitted to quote Mr. Donaldson's language:—"The author's ideas are no romance or chimera, but a very feasible entertainment of the undertaking, when a social revolution permits the fruits of all climes to be used in freedom of the burden of value that is imposed by monopoly, and restricts the legitimate appropriation."

George Adams, in 1810, proposed "A New System of Agriculture and Feeding Stock," of which the novelty lay in movable sheds, (upon iron tram-ways,) for the purpose of soiling cattle. The method was certainly original; nor can it be regarded as wholly visionary in our time, when the iron conduits of Mr. Mechi, under the steam-thrust of the Tip-Tree engines, are showing a percentage of profit.

Charles Drury, in the same year, recommended, in an elaborate treatise, the steaming of straw, roots, and hay, for cattle-food,—a recommendation which, in our time, has been put into most successful practice.

Mowbray, who was for a long time the great authority upon Domestic Fowls and their Treatment, published his book in 1803, which he represents as having been compiled from the memoranda of forty years' experience.

And next, as illustrative of the rural literature of the early part of this century, I must introduce the august name of Sir Humphry Davy. This I am warranted in doing on two several counts: first, because he was an accomplished fisherman and the author of "Salmonia," and next, because he was the first scientific man of any repute who was formally invited by a Board of Agriculture to discuss the relations of Chemistry to the practice of farming.

Unfortunately, he was himself ignorant of practical agriculture,²⁷ when called upon to illustrate its relations to chemistry; but, like an earnest man, he set about informing himself by communication with the best farmers of the kingdom. He delivered a very admirable series of lectures, and it was without doubt most agreeable to the country-gentlemen to find the great waste from their fermenting manures made clear by Sir Humphry's retorts; but Davy was too profound and too honest a man to lay down for farmers any chemical high-road to success. He directed and stimulated inquiry; he developed many of the principles which underlay their best practice; but he offered them no safety-lamp. I think he brought more zeal to his investigations in the domain of pure science; he loved well-defined and brilliant results; and I do not think that he pushed his inquiries in regard to the way in which the forage-plants availed themselves of sulphate of lime with one-half the earnestness or delight with which he conducted his discovery of the integral character of chlorine, or with which he saw for the first time the metallic globules bubbling out from the electrified crust of potash.

Yet he loved the country with a rare and thorough love, as his descriptions throughout his letters prove; and he delighted in straying away, in the leafy month of June, to the charming place of his friend Knight, upon the Teme in Herefordshire. His "Salmonia" is, in its way, a pastoral; not, certainly, to be compared with the original of Walton, lacking its simple homeliness, for which its superior scientific accuracy can make but poor amends. I cannot altogether forget, in reading it, that its author is a fine gentleman from London. Neither fish, nor alders, nor eddies, nor purling shallows, can drive out of memory the fact that Sir Humphry must be back at "The Hall" by half-past six, in season to dress for dinner. Walton, in slouch-hat, bound about with "leaders," sat upon the green turf to listen to a milkmaid's song. Sir Humphry (I think he must have carried a camp-stool) recited some verses written by "a noble lady long distinguished at court."²⁸

In fact, there was always a great deal of the fine gentleman about the great chemist,—almost too fine for the quiet tenor of a working-life. Those first brilliant successes of his professional career at the Royal Institution of London, before he was turned of thirty, and in which his youth, his splendid elocution, his happy discoveries, his attractive manner, all made him the mark for distinguished attentions, went very far, I fancy, to carry him to that stage of social intoxication under which he was deluded into marrying a wealthy lady of fashion, and a confirmed blue-stocking,—the brilliant Mrs. Apreece.

Little domestic comfort ever came of the marriage. Yet he was a chivalrous man, and took the issue calmly. It is always in his letters,—"My dear Jane," and "God bless you! Yours affectionately." But these expressions bound the tender passages. It was altogether a gentlemanly and a lady-like affair. Only once, as I can find, he forgets himself in an honest repining; it is in a letter to his brother, under date of October 30, 1823:²⁹—"To add to my annoyances, I find my house, as usual, after the arrangements made by the mistress of it, without female servants; but in this world we have to suffer and bear, and from Socrates down to humble mortals, domestic discomfort seems a sort of philosophical fate."