Retrospect of Western Travel Volume Ii Part 11

Of the consequences of this simple affair it is not my intention to give any account, chiefly because it would be impossible to convey to my English readers my conviction of the smallness of the portion of American society which was concerned in the treatment inflicted upon me.

The hubbub was so great, and the modes of insult were so various, as to justify distant observers in concluding that the whole nation had risen against me. I soon found how few can make a great noise, while the many are careless or ignorant of what is going on about a person or a party with whom they have nothing to do; and while not a few are rendered more hearty in their regard and more generous in their hospitality by the disgraces of the individual who is under the oppression of public censure. All that I antic.i.p.ated at the moment of reading the note came to pa.s.s, but only for a time. Eventually, nothing remained which in the slightest degree modified my opinions or impaired my hopes of the society I was investigating.

The secretary's report was drawn up with remarkable ability, and some animating and beautiful letters were read from distant members of the a.s.sociation. The business which had been interrupted by violence was put in train again; and, when the meeting broke up, a strong feeling of satisfaction visibly pervaded it. The right of meeting was vindicated; righteous pertinacity had conquered violence, and no immediate check to the efforts of the society was to be apprehended.

The trials of the abolitionists of Boston were, however, not yet over.

Two months before, the attorney-general of the state had advocated in council the expected demand of the South, that abolitionists should be delivered up to the Slave States for trial and punishment under Southern laws. This fact is credible to those, and, perhaps, to those only, who have seen the pamphlet in reply to Dr. Channing's work on Slavery attributed to this gentleman. The South was not long in making the demand. Letters arrived from the governors of Southern States to the new governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, demanding the pa.s.sing of laws against abolitionism in all its forms. The governor, as was his business, laid these letters before the legislature of his state. This was the only thing he could do on this occasion. Just before, at his entrance upon his office, he had aimed his blow at the abolitionists in the following pa.s.sages of his address. The same delusion (if it be mere delusion) is visible here that is shared by all persons in power, who cannot deny that an evil exists, but have not courage to remove it; a vague hope that "fate, or Providence, or something," will do the work which men are created to perform; men of principle and men of peace, like the abolitionists; victims, not perpetrators of violence. "As the genius of our inst.i.tutions and the character of our people are entirely repugnant to laws impairing the liberty of speech and of the press, even for the sake of repressing its abuses, the patriotism of all cla.s.ses of citizens must be invoked to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave; and which, if not abandoned, there is great reason to fear will prove the rock on which the Union will split." ...

"A conciliatory forbearance," he proceeds to say, "would leave this whole painful subject where the Const.i.tution leaves it, with the states where it exists, and in the hands of an all-wise Providence, who in his own good time is able to cause it to disappear, like the slavery of the ancient world, under the gradual operation of the gentle spirit of Christianity." The time is at hand. The "gradual operation of the gentle spirit of Christianity" had already educated the minds and hearts of the abolitionists for the work they are doing, but which the governor would fain have put off. It thus appears that they had the governor and attorney-general of the state against them, and the wealth, learning, and power of their city. It will be seen how their legislature was affected towards them.

As soon as they were aware of the demands of the Southern governors, they pet.i.tioned their legislature for a hearing, according to the invariable practice of persons who believe that they may be injured by the pa.s.sing of any proposed law. The hearing was granted, as a matter of course; and a committee of five members of the legislature was appointed to hear what the abolitionists had to say. The place and time appointed were the Senate Chamber, on the afternoon of Friday, the 4th of March.

The expectation had been that few or none but the parties immediately concerned would be present at the discussion of such "a low subject;"

but the event proved that more curiosity was abroad than had been supposed. I went just before the appointed hour, and took my seat with my party, in the empty gallery of the Senate Chamber. The abolitionists dropped in one by one; Garrison, May, Goodell, Follen, E. G. Loring, and others. The committee treated them with ostentatious neglect, dawdling away the time, and keeping them waiting a full hour beyond the appointed time. The gallery filled rapidly, and more and more citizens entered the room below. To our great delight, Dr. Channing made his appearance there. At length it was manifest that the Senate Chamber was not large enough; and we adjourned to the Hall of Representatives, which was soon about two thirds filled.

I could not have conceived that such conduct could have been ventured upon as that of the chairman of the committee. It was so insulting as to disgust the citizens present, whatever might be their way of thinking on the question which brought them together. The chairman and another of the five were evidently predetermined. They spared no pains in showing it, twisting the meaning of expressions employed by the pleaders, noting down any disjointed phrase which could be made to tell against those who used it, conveying sarcasms in their questions and insult in their remarks. Two others evidenced a desire to fulfil their function, to hear what the abolitionists had to say. Dr. Channing took his seat behind the pleaders; and I saw with pleasure that he was handing them notes, acting on their side as decisively, and almost as publicly as if he had spoken.

After several unanswerable defences against charges had been made, and Mr. Loring had extorted the respect of the committee by a speech in which he showed that a legislative censure is more injurious than penal laws, it was Dr. Follen's turn to speak. He was presently stopped by the chairman, with a command that he should be respectful to the committee; with an intimation that the gentlemen were heard only as a matter of favour. They protested against this, their hearing having been demanded as a matter of right; they refused to proceed, and broke up the conference.

Much good was done by this afternoon's proceedings. The feeling of the bystanders was, on the whole, decidedly in favour of the pleaders, and the issue of the affair was watched with much interest. The next day the abolitionists demanded a hearing as a matter of right; and it was granted likewise as an affair of course. The second hearing was appointed for Tuesday the 8th, at the same place and hour.

Some well-meaning friends of the abolitionists had in the interval advised that the most accomplished, popular, and gentlemanly of the abolitionists should conduct the business of the second day; that the speeches should be made by Dr. Follen, Messrs. Loring and Sewall, and one or two more; and that Garrison and Goodell, the homely, primitive, and eminently suffering men of the apostles.h.i.+p, should be induced to remain in the background. The advice was righteously rejected; and, as it happened, theirs were the speeches that went farthest in winning over the feeling of the audience to their side. I shall never forget the swimming eye and tremulous voice with which a n.o.ble lady of the persecuted party answered such a suggestion as I have mentioned. "Oh,"

said she, "above all things, we must be just and faithful to Garrison.

You do not know what we know; that, unless we put him, on every occasion, into the midst of the _gentlemen_ of the party, he will be torn to pieces. Nothing can save him but his being made one with those whom his enemies will not dare to touch." As for Mr. Goodell, he had been frequently stoned. "He was used to it." They appeared in the midst of the professional gentlemen of the a.s.sociation, and did the most eminent service of the day.

The hall was crowded, and shouts of applause broke forth as the pleaders demolished an accusation or successfully reb.u.t.ted the insolence of the chairman. Dr. Follen was again stopped, as he was showing that mobs had been the invariable consequence of censures of abolitionism pa.s.sed by public meetings in the absence of gag-laws. He was desired to hold his tongue, or to be respectful to the committee; to which he replied, in his gentlest and most musical voice, "Am I, then, to understand that, in speaking ill of mobs, I am disrespectful to the committee?" The chairman looked foolish enough during the applauses which followed this question.

Dr. Follen fought his ground inch by inch, and got out all he had to say. The conduct of the chairman became at last so insufferable, that several spectators attempted a remonstrance. A merchant was silenced; a physician was listened to, his speech being seasoned with wit so irresistible as to put all parties into good-humour.

The loudly-expressed opinion of the spectators as they dispersed was, that the chairman had ruined his political career, and, probably, filled the chair of a committee of the legislature for the last time. The result of the affair was that the report of the committee "spoke disrespectfully" of the exertions of the abolitionists, but rejected the suggestion of penal laws being pa.s.sed to control their operations. The letters from the South therefore remained unanswered.

The abolitionists held a consultation whether they should complain to the legislature of the treatment their statements had received, and of the impediments thrown in the way of their self-justification. They decided to let the matter rest, trusting that there were witnesses enough of their case to enlighten the public mind on their position. A member of the legislature declared in his place what he had seen of the treatment of the appellants by the chairman, and proposed that the committee should be censured. As the aggrieved persons made no formal complaint, however, the matter was dropped. But the faith of the abolitionists was justified. The people were enlightened as to their position; and in the next election they returned a set of representatives, one of whose earliest acts was to pa.s.s a series of anti-slavery resolutions by a majority of 378 to 16.

These were a few of the signs of the times in Ma.s.sachusetts when I was there. They proved that, while the aristocracy of the great cities were not to be trusted to maintain the great principles on which their society was based, the body of the people were sound.

HOT AND COLD WEATHER.

"Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find A way to measure out the wind; Show me that world of stars, and whence They noiseless spill their influence!

This if thou canst."

HERRICK.

"Sic vita."

I believe no one attempts to praise the climate of New-England. The very low average of health there, the prevalence of consumption and of decay of the teeth, are evidences of an unwholesome climate which I believe are universally received as such. The mortality among children throughout the whole country is a dark feature of life in the United States. I do not know whether any investigation has been made into the numbers who die in infancy; but there can be no mistake in a.s.suming that it is much greater than among the cla.s.ses in Europe who are in a situation of equal external comfort. It was afflicting to meet with cases of bereavement which seem to leave few hopes or objects in life; it is afflicting to review them now, as they rise up before my mind. One acquaintance of mine had lost four out of six children; another five out of seven; another six out of seven; another thirteen out of sixteen; and one mourner tells me that a fatality seems to attend the females of his family, for, out of eighteen, only one little granddaughter survives; and most of this family died very young, and of different kinds of disease. Never did I see so many wo-worn mothers as in America. Wherever we went in the North, we heard of "the lung fever" as of a common complaint, and children seemed to be as liable to it as grown persons.

The climate is doubtless chiefly to blame for all this, and I do not see how any degree of care could obviate much of the evil. The children must be kept warm within doors; and the only way of affording them the range of the house is by warming the whole, from the cellar to the garret, by means of a furnace in the hall. This makes all comfortable within; but, then, the risk of going out is very great. There is far less fog and damp than in England, and the perfectly calm, sunny days of midwinter are endurable; but the least breath of wind seems to chill one's very life. I had no idea what the suffering from extreme cold amounted to till one day, in Boston, I walked the length of the city and back again in a wind, with the thermometer seven degrees and a half below zero. I had been warned of the cold, but was anxious to keep an appointment to attend a meeting. We put on all the merinoes and furs we could muster; but we were insensible of them from the moment the wind reached us. My m.u.f.f seemed to be made of ice; I almost fancied I should have been warmer without it. We managed getting to the meeting pretty well, the stock of warmth we had brought out with us lasting till then.

But we set out cold on our return; and, by the time I got home, I did not very well know where I was and what I was about. The stupefaction from cold is particularly disagreeable, the sense of pain remaining through it; and I determined not to expose myself to it again. All this must be dangerous to children; and if, to avoid it, they are shut up during the winter, there remains the danger of encountering the ungenial spring.

It is a wretched climate. The old lines would run in my head,

"And feel, by turns, the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce: From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immoveable, infixed, and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire."

The fiery part of the trial, however, I did not much mind; for, after the first week of languor, I enjoyed the heat, except for the perpetual evidence that was before us of the mischief or fatality of its effects to persons who could not sit in the shade, and take it quietly, as we could. There were frequent instances of death in the streets, and the working-people suffer cruelly in the hot months. But the cold is a real evil to all cla.s.ses, and, I think, much the most serious of the two. I found the second winter more trying than the first, and I hardly know how I should have sustained a third.

Every season, however, has its peculiar pleasures; and in the retrospect these s.h.i.+ne out brightly, while the evils disappear.

On a December morning you are awakened by the domestic sc.r.a.ping at your hearth. Your anthracite fire has been in all night; and now the ashes are carried away, more coal is put on, and the blower hides the kindly red from you for a time. In half an hour the fire is intense, though, at the other end of the room, everything you touch seems to blister your fingers with cold. If you happen to turn up a corner of the carpet with your foot, it gives out a flash; and your hair crackles as you brush it.

Breakfast is always hot, be the weather what it may. The coffee is scalding, and the buckwheat cakes steam when the cover is taken off.

Your host's little boy asks whether he may go coasting to-day, and his sisters tell you what day the schools will all go sleighing. You may see boys coasting on Boston Common all the winter day through; and too many in the streets, where it is not so safe. To coast is to ride on a board down a frozen slope; and many children do this in the steep streets which lead down to the Common, as well as on the snowy slopes within the enclosure where no carriages go. Some sit on their heels on the board, some on their crossed legs. Some strike their legs out, put their arms a-kimbo, and so a.s.sume an air of defiance amid their velocity. Others prefer lying on their stomachs, and so going headforemost; an att.i.tude whose comfort I never could enter into. Coasting is a wholesome exercise for hardy boys. Of course they have to walk up the ascent, carrying their boards between every feat of coasting; and this affords them more exercise than they are at all aware of taking.

As for the sleighing, I heard much more than I experienced of its charms. No doubt early a.s.sociation has something to do with the American fondness for this mode of locomotion; and much of the affection which is borne to music, dancing, supping, and all kinds of frolic, is transferred to the vehicle in which the frolicking parties are transported. It must be so, I think, or no one would be found to prefer a carriage on runners to a carriage on wheels, except on an untrodden expanse of snow. On a perfectly level and crisp surface I can fancy the smooth rapid motion to be exceedingly pleasant; but such surfaces are rare in the neighbourhood of populous cities. The uncertain, rough motion in streets hillocky with snow, or on roads consisting for the season of a ridge of snow with holes in it, is disagreeable, and provocative of headache. I am no rule for others as to liking the bells; but to me their incessant jangle was a great annoyance. Add to this the sitting, without exercise, in a wind caused by the rapidity of the motion, and the list of _desagremens_ is complete. I do not know the author of a description of sleighing which was quoted to me, but I admire it for its fidelity. "Do you want to know what sleighing is like?

You can soon try. Set your chair on a springboard out in the porch on Christmas day; put your feet in a pailful of powdered ice; have somebody to jingle a bell in one ear, and somebody else to blow into the other with the bellows, and you will have an exact idea of sleighing."

I was surprised to find that young people whose health is too delicate to allow them to do many simple things, are not too delicate to go out sleighing in an open sleigh. They put hot bricks under their feet, and wrap up in furs; but the face remains exposed, and the breathing the frosty air of a winter's night, after dancing, may be easily conceived to be the cause of much of the "lung fever" of which the stranger hears.

The gayest sleighing that I saw was on the day when all the schools in Boston have a holyday, and the pupils go abroad in a long procession of sleighs. The mult.i.tude of happy young faces, though pinched with cold, was a pretty sight.

If the morning be fine, you have calls to make, or shopping to do, or some meeting to attend. If the streets be coated with ice, you put on your India-rubber shoes--unsoled--to guard you from slipping. If not, you are pretty sure to measure your length on the pavement before your own door. Some of the handsomest houses in Boston, those which boast the finest flights of steps, have planks laid on the steps during the season of frost, the wood being less slippery than stone. If, as sometimes happens, a warm wind should be suddenly breathing over the snow, you go back to change your shoes, India-rubbers being as slippery in wet as leather soles are on ice. Nothing is seen in England like the streets of Boston and New-York at the end of the season while the thaw is proceeding. The area of the street had been so raised that pa.s.sengers could look over the blinds of your ground-floor rooms; when the sidewalks become full of holes and puddles, they are cleared, and the pa.s.sengers are reduced to their proper level; but the middle of the street remains exalted, and the carriages drive along a ridge. Of course, this soon becomes too dangerous, and for a season ladies and gentlemen walk; carts tumble, slip, and slide, and get on as they can; while the ma.s.s, now dirty, not only with thaw, but with quant.i.ties of refuse vegetables, sweepings of the poor people's houses, and other rubbish which it was difficult to know what to do with while every place was frozen up, daily sinks and dissolves into a composite mud. It was in New-York and some of the inferior streets of Boston that I saw this process in its completeness.

If the morning drives are extended beyond the city, there is much to delight the eye. The trees are cased in ice; and when the sun s.h.i.+nes out suddenly, the whole scene looks like one diffused rainbow, dressed in a brilliancy which can hardly be conceived of in England. On days less bright, the blue harbour spreads in strong contrast with the sheeted snow which extends to its very brink.

The winter evenings begin joyously with the festival of Thanksgiving Day, which is, if I remember rightly, held on the first Thursday of December. The festival is ordered by proclamation of the governor of the state, which proclamation is read in all the churches. The Boston friends with whom we had ascended the Mississippi, and travelled in Tennessee and Kentucky, did not forget that we were strangers in the land; and many weeks before Thanksgiving Day they invited us to join their family gathering on that great annual festival. We went to church in the morning, and listened to the thanksgiving for the mercies of the year, and to an exemplification of the truth that national prosperity is of value only as it is sanctified to individual progression; an important doctrine, well enforced. This is the occasion chosen by the boldest of the clergy to say what they think of the faults of the nation, and particularly to reprobate apathy on the slavery question.

There are few who dare do this, though it seems to be understood that this is an occasion on which "particular preaching" may go a greater length than on common Sundays. Yet a circ.u.mstance happened in New-York on this very day which shows that the clergy have, at least in some places, a very short tether, even on Thanksgiving Day. An Episcopalian clergyman from England, named Pyne, who had been some years settled in America, preached a thanksgiving sermon, in which he made a brief and moderate, even commonplace allusion to the toleration of slavery among other national sins. For some weeks he heard only the distant mutterings of the storm which was about to burst upon him; but within three months he was not only dismissed from his office, but compelled to leave the country, though he had settled his family from England beside him. He was anxious to obey the wishes of his friends, and print verbatim the sermon which had caused his ruin; but no printer would print, and no publisher would agree to sell his sermon. At length he found a printer who promised to print it on condition of his name being kept secret; and the sermon was dispersed without the aid of a publisher. Mr. Pyne sailed for England on the following 1st of April; as it happened, in the same s.h.i.+p with Mr. Breckinridge, the Presbyterian clergyman who put himself into unsuccessful opposition to Mr. Thompson, at a public discussion at Glasgow last year. The voyage was not a pleasant one, as might be supposed, to either clergyman. Nothing could be more mal-a-propos than that one who came over with a defence in his mouth of the conduct of the American clergy on the slavery question should be shut up for three weeks with a clergyman banished for opening his lips on the subject.

After service Dr. Channing took us to Persico's studio, where the new bust of Dr. Channing stood; and one, scarcely less excellent, of Governor Everett. We then spent an hour at Dr. Channing's, and he gave me his book on slavery, which was to be published two days afterward. I was obliged to leave it unread till the festivities of the day were over; but that night and two succeeding ones I read it completely through before I slept. It is impossible to communicate an idea of the importance and interest of that book at the time it was published. I heard soon afterward that there was difficulty in procuring it at Was.h.i.+ngton, partly from the timidity of the booksellers, it having been called in Congress "an incendiary book." It was let out at a high price per hour. Of course, as soon as this was understood at Boston, supplies were sent otherwise than through the booksellers, so that members of Congress were no longer obliged to quote the book merely from the extracts contained in the miserable reply to it which was extensively circulated in the metropolis.

This book was in my head all the rest of the day, from whose observances all dark subjects seemed banished. At three o'clock a family party of about thirty were a.s.sembled round two wellspread tables. There was only one drawback, that five of the children were absent, being ill of the measles. There was much merriment among us grown people at the long-table; but the bursts of laughter from the children's side-table, where a kind aunt presided, were incessant. After dinner we played hunt-the-slipper with the children, while the gentlemen were at their wine; and then went to spend an hour with a poor boy in the measles, who was within hearing of the mirth, but unable to leave his easy-chair.

When we had made him laugh as much as was good for him with some of our most ludicrous English Christmas games, we went down to communicate more of this curious kind of learning in the drawing-rooms. There we introduced a set of games quite new to the company; and it was delightful to see with what spirit and wit they were entered into and carried on. Dumb Crambo was made to yield its ultimate rhymes, and the storytelling in Old Coach was of the richest. When we were all quite tired with laughing, the children began to go away; some fresh visiters dropped in from other houses, and music and supper followed. We got home by eleven o'clock, very favourably impressed with the inst.i.tution of Thanksgiving Day. I love to dwell upon it now, for a new interest hangs over that festival. The friend by whose thoughtfulness we were admitted to this family gathering, and in whose companions.h.i.+p we went--the beloved of every heart there, the sweetest, the sprightliest of the party--will be among them no more.

Christmas evening was very differently pa.s.sed, but in a way to me even more interesting. We were in a country village, Hingham, near the sh.o.r.es of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and were staying in the house of the pastor, our clerical s.h.i.+pmate. The weather was bad, in the early part of the day extremely so; and the attendance at the church was therefore not large, and no one came to dinner. The church was dressed up with evergreens in great quant.i.ty, and arranged with much taste. The organist had composed a new anthem, which was well sung by the young men and women of the congregation. At home the rooms were prettily dressed with green, and an ample supply of lights was provided against the evening. Soon after dinner some little girls arrived to play with the children of the house, and we resumed the teaching of English Christmas games. The little things were tired, and went away early enough to leave us a quiet hour before the doors were thrown open to "the parish," whose custom it is to flock to the pastor's house, to exchange greetings with him on Christmas night. What I saw makes me think this a delightful custom. There is no expensive or laborious preparation for their reception. The rooms are well lighted, and cake and lemonade are provided, and this is all.

The pastor and his wife received their guests as they came in, and then all moved on to offer the greetings of the season to me. Many remained to talk with me, to my great delight. There was the schoolmaster, with his daughters. There was Farmer B., who has a hobby. This place was colonized by English from Hingham in Norfolk, and Farmer B.'s ancestors were among them. He has a pa.s.sion for hearing about Old Hingham, and, by dint of questioning every stranger, and making use of all kinds of opportunity, he has learned far more than I ever knew about the old place. His hopes rose high when he found I was a native of Norfolk; but I was obliged to depress them again by confessing how little I could tell of the old place, within a few miles of which my early years were spent. I was able to give him some trifling fact, however, about the direction in which the road winds, and for this he expressed fervent grat.i.tude. I was afterward told that he is apt to drive his oxen into the ditch, and to lose a sheep or two when his head is running on "the old place." I have not yet succeeded in my attempts to obtain a sketch of Old Hingham to send over to Farmer B.; but I wish I could, for I believe it would please him more than the bequest of a fortune.

Then came Captain L. with his five fine daughters. He looked too old to be their father, and well he might. When master of a vessel he was set ash.o.r.e by pirates, with his crew, on a desert island, where he was thirty-six days without food. Almost all his crew were dead, and he just dying, when help arrived, by means of freemasonry. Among the pirates was a Scotchman, a mason, as was Captain L. The two exchanged signs. The Scotchman could not give aid at the moment; but, after many days of fruitless and anxious attempts, he contrived to sail back, at the risk of his life, and landed on the desert island on the thirty-sixth day from his leaving it. He had no expectation of finding any of the party alive; but, to take the chance and lose no time, he jumped ash.o.r.e with a kettleful of wine in his hand. He poured wine down the throats of the few whom he found still breathing, and treated them so judiciously that they recovered. At least it was called recovery; but Captain L.'s looks are very haggard and nervous still. He took the Scotchman home, and cherished him to the day of his death.

Then there was an excellent woman, the general benefactress of the village, who is always ready to nurse the sick and help the afflicted, and to be of eminent service in another way to her young neighbours. She a.s.sembles them in the evenings once or twice a week, and reads with them and to them; and thus the young women of the village are obtaining a knowledge of Italian and French, as well as English literature, which would have been unattainable without her help. The daughters of the fishermen, bucket and netmakers, and farmers of Hingham, are far more accomplished than many a highbred young lady in England and New-York.

Such a village population is one of the true glories of America. Many such girls were at their pastor's this evening, dressed in silk gowns of the latest make, with rich French pelerines, and their well-arranged hair bound with coloured riband; as pretty a set of girls as could be collected anywhere.

When it appeared that the rooms were beginning to thin, the organist called the young people round him, and they sang the new Christmas anthem extremely well. Finally, a Christmas hymn was sung by all to the tune of Old Hundred; the pastor and his people exchanged the blessing of the season, and in a few minutes the house was cleared.

About this scene also hangs a tender and mournful interest. Our hostess was evidently unwell at this time; I feared seriously so; and I was not mistaken. She was one of the n.o.blest women I have ever known, with a mind large in its reach, rich in its cultivation, and strong in its independence; yet never was there a spirit more yearning in its tenderness, more gay in its innocence. Just a year after this time she wrote me tidings of her approaching death, cheerfully intimating the probability that she might live to hear from me once more. My letter arrived just as she was laid in her coffin. Her interest in the great objects of humanity, to which she had dedicated her best days, never failed. Her mind was active about them to the last. She was never deceived, as the victims of consumption usually are, about her state of health and chance of life, but saw her case as others saw it, only with far more contentment and cheerfulness. She left bright messages of love for all of us who knew what was in her mind, with an animating bidding to go on with our several works. Nothing could be more simple than the state of her mind and the expression of it, proving that she so knew how to live as to find nothing strange in dying.

I was present at the introduction into the new country of the spectacle of the German Christmas-tree. My little friend Charley and three companions had been long preparing for this pretty show. The cook had broken her eggs carefully in the middle for some weeks past, that Charley might have the sh.e.l.ls for cups; and these cups were gilded and coloured very prettily. I rather think it was, generally speaking, a secret out of the house; but I knew what to expect. It was a Newyear's tree, however; for I could not go on Christmas-eve, and it was kindly settled that Newyear's-eve would do as well. We were sent for before dinner, and we took up two round-faced boys by the way. Early as it was, we were all so busy that we could scarcely spare a respectful attention to our plum-pudding. It was desirable that our preparations should be completed before the little folks should begin to arrive; and we were all engaged in sticking on the last of the seven dozen of wax-tapers, and in filling the gilded egg-cups and gay paper cornucopiae with comfits, lozenges, and barley-sugar. The tree was the top of a young fir, planted in a tub, which was ornamented with moss. Smart dolls and other whimsies glittered in the evergreen, and there was not a twig which had not something sparkling upon it. When the sound of wheels was heard, we had just finished; and we shut up the tree by itself in the front drawing-room, while we went into the other, trying to look as if nothing was going to happen. Charley looked a good deal like himself, only now and then twisting himself about in an unaccountable fit of giggling. It was a very large party; for, besides the tribes of children, there were papas and mammas, uncles, aunts, and elder sisters. When all were come we shut out the cold; the great fire burned clearly; the tea and coffee were as hot as possible, and the cheeks of the little ones grew rosier and their eyes brighter every moment. It had been settled that, in order to cover our designs, I was to resume my vocation of teaching Christmas games after tea, while Charley's mother and her maids went to light up the front room. So all found seats, many of the children on the floor, for Old Coach. It was difficult to divide even an American stagecoach into parts enough for every member of such a party to represent one; but we managed it without allowing any of the elderly folks to sit out. The grand fun of all was to make the clergyman and an aunt or two get up and spin round. When they were fairly practised in the game, I turned over my story to a neighbour, and got away to help to light up the tree.

It really looked beautiful; the room seemed in a blaze, and the ornaments were so well hung on that no accident happened, except that one doll's petticoat caught fire. There was a sponge tied to the end of a stick to put out any supernumerary blaze, and no harm ensued. I mounted the steps behind the tree to see the effect of opening the doors. It was delightful. The children poured in, but in a moment every voice was hushed. Their faces were upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested. n.o.body spoke, only Charley leaped for joy. The first symptom of recovery was the children's wandering round the tree. At last a quick pair of eyes discovered that it bore something eatable, and from that moment the babble began again.

They were told that they might get what they could without burning themselves; and we tall people kept watch, and helped them with good things from the higher branches. When all had had enough, we returned to the larger room, and finished the evening with dancing. By ten o'clock all were well warmed for the ride home with steaming mulled wine, and the prosperous evening closed with shouts of mirth. By a little after eleven Charley's father and mother and I were left by ourselves to sit in the Newyear. I have little doubt the Christmas-tree will become one of the most flouris.h.i.+ng exotics of New-England.