Nature and Human Nature Part 25

"Hush," said I, "I will tell you by and by. Old Tom is playing again."

It was "Auld lang syne." How touching it was! It brought tears to Jessie's eyes. She had learned it, when a child, far, far away; and it recalled her tribe, her childhood, her country, and her mother. I could see these thoughts throw their shadows over her face, as light clouds chase each other before the sun, and throw their veil, as they course along the sky, over the glowing landscape. It made me feel sad, too; for how many of them with whom my early years were spent have pa.s.sed away. Of all the fruit borne by the tree of life, how small a portion drops from it when fully ripe, and in the due course of nature. The worm, and premature decay, are continually thinning them; and the tempest and the blight destroy the greater part of those that are left. Poor dear worthy old Minister, you too are gone, but not forgotten. How could I have had these thoughts? How could I have enjoyed these scenes? and how described them? but for you! Innocent, pure, and simple-minded man, how fond you were of nature, the handy-work of G.o.d, as you used to call it. How full you were of poetry, beauty, and sublimity! And what do I not owe to you? I am not ashamed of having been a Clockmaker, I am proud of it.1 But I should indeed have been ashamed, with your instruction, always to have remained one. Yes, yes!

"Why should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind?"

Why? indeed.

1 This is the pa.s.sage to which Mr Slick referred in the conversation I had with him, related in Chapter I., ent.i.tled, "A Surprise."

"Tam it," said Peter, for we were so absorbed in listening to the music, we did not hear the approach of the boat, "ta ting is very coot, but it don't stir up te blood, and make you feel like a man, as ta pipes do! Did she ever hear barris an tailler? Fan she has done with her bra.s.s cow-horn, she will give it to you. It can wake the tead, that air. When she was a piper poy to the fort, Captain Fraisher was killed by the fall of a tree, knocked as stiff as a gunparrel, and as silent too. We laid her out on the counter in one of the stores, and pefore we put her into the coffin the governor said: 'Peter,' said he, 'she was always fond of barris an tailler, play it before we nail her up, come, seid suas (strike up).'

"Well, she gets the pipes and plays it hern ainsel, and the governor forgot his tears; and seized McPhee by the hand, and they danced; they couldn't help it when that air was played, and what do you think? It prought Captain Fraisher to life. First she opened her eyes, and ten her mouth again wunst more. She did, upon my shoul.

"Says she, 'Peter, play it faster, will you? More faster yet, you blackguard.' And she tropt the pipes and ran away, and it was the first and last time Peter McDonald ever turned his pack on a friend.

The doctor said it was a trance, but he was a sa.s.sanach and knew nothing about music; but it was the pipes prought the tead to. This is the air," and he played it with such vigour he nearly grew black in the face.

"I believe it," sais I; "it has brought me to also, it has made me a new man, and brought me back to life again. Let us land the moose."

"Ted," said Peter, "she is worth two ted men yet. There is only two teaths. Ted as te tevil, and ted drunk, and she ain't neither; and if she were poth she would wake her up with tat tune, barris an tailler, as she tid Captain Fraisher, tat she will."

"Now," said I, "let us land the moose."

CHAPTER XI.

A DAY ON THE LAKE.--PART II.

Peter's horrid pipes knocked all the romance out of me. It took all the talk of dear old Minister (whose conversation was often like poetry without rhyme), till I was of age, to instil it into me. If it hadn't been for him I should have been a mere practical man, exactly like our Connecticut folks, who have as much sentiment in them in a general way as an onion has of otter of roses. It's lucky when it don't predominate though, for when it does, it spoils the relish for the real business of life.

Mother, when I was a boy, used to coax me up so everlastingly with loaf-cake, I declare I got such a sweet tooth, I could hardly eat plain bread made of flour and corn meal, although it was the wholesomest of the two. When I used to tell Minister this sometimes, as he was flying off the handle, like when we travelled through New York State to Niagara, at the scenery of the Hudson; or Lake George, or that everlastin' water-fall, he'd say--

"Sam, you are as correct as a problem in Euclid, but as cold and dry.

Business and romance are like oil and water that I use for a night-lamp, with a little cork dipsey. They oughtn't to be mixed, but each to be separate, or they spoil each other. The tumbler should be nearly full of water, then pour a little oil on the top, and put in your tiny wick and floater, and ignite it. The water goes to the bottom--that's business you see, solid and heavy. The oil and its burner lies on the top--and that's romance. It's a living flame, not enough to illuminate the room, but to cheer you through the night, and if you want more, it will light stronger ones for you. People have a wrong idea of romance, Sam. Properly understood, it's a right keen, lively appreciation of the works of nature, and its beauty, wonders, and sublimity. From thence we learn to fear, to serve, and to adore Him that made them and us. Now, Sam, you understand all the wheels, and pullies, and balances of your wooden clocks; but you don't think anything more of them, than it's a grand speculation for you, because they cost you a mere nothing, seeing they are made out of that which is as cheap as dirt here, and because you make a great profit out of them among the benighted colonists, who know little themselves, and are governed by English officials who know still less. Well, that's nateral, for it is a business view of things.1 Now sposen you lived in the Far West woods, away from great cities, and never saw a watch or a wooden clock before, and fust sot your eyes on one of them that was as true as the sun, wouldn't you break out into enthusiasm about it, and then extol to the skies the skill and knowledge of the Yankee man that invented and made it? To be sure you would. Wouldn't it carry you off into contemplatin' of the planet whose daily course and speed it measures so exact? Wouldn't you go on from that point, and ask yourself what must be the wisdom and power of Him who made innumerable worlds, and caused them to form part of a great, grand, magnificent, and harmonious system, and fly off the handle, as you call it, in admiration and awe? To be sure you would. And if anybody said you was full of romance who heard you, wouldn't you have pitied his ignorance, and said there are other enjoyments we are capable of besides corporeal ones? Wouldn't you be a wiser and a better man? Don't you go now for to run down romance, Sam; if you do, I shall think you don't know there is a divinity within you," and so he would preach on for an hour, till I thought it was time for him to say Amen and give the dismissal benediction.

1 It is manifest Mr Hopewell must have had Paley's ill.u.s.tration in his mind.

Well, that's the way I came by it, I was inoculated for it, but I was always a hard subject to inoculate. Vaccination was tried on me over and over again by the doctor before I took it, but at last it came and got into the system. So it was with him and his romance, it was only the continual dropping that wore the stone at last, for I didn't listen as I had ought to have done. If he had a showed me where I could have made a dollar, he would have found me wide awake, I know, for I set out in life with a determination to go ahead, and I have; and now I am well to do, but still I wish I had a minded more what he did say, for, poor old soul, he is dead now. An opportunity lost, is like missing a pa.s.sage, another chance may never offer to make the voyage worth while. The first wind may carry you to the end. A good start often wins the race. To miss your chance of a shot, is to lose the bird.

How true these "saws" of his are; but I don't recollect half of them, I am ashamed to say. Yes, it took me a long time to get romance in my sails, and Peter shook it out of them by one s.h.i.+ver in the wind. So we went to work. The moose was left on the sh.o.r.e, for the doctor said he had another destination for him than the water-fall. Betty, Jackson, and Peter, were embarked with their baskets and utensils in the boats, and directed to prepare our dinner.

As soon as they were fairly off, we strolled leisurely back to the house, which I had hardly time to examine before. It was an irregular building made of hewn logs, and appeared to have been enlarged, from time to time, as more accommodation had been required. There was neither uniformity nor design in it, and it might rather be called a small cl.u.s.ter of little tenements than a house. Two of these structures alone seemed to correspond in appearance and size. They protruded in front, from each end of the main building, forming with it three sides of a square. One of these was appropriated to the purposes of a museum, and the other used as a workshop. The former contained an exceedingly interesting collection.

"This room," he said, "I cannot intrust to Jackson, who would soon throw everything into confusion by grouping instead of cla.s.sifying things. This country is full of most valuable minerals, and the people know as much about them as a pudding does of the plums contained in it. Observe this shelf, Sir, there are specimens of seven different kinds of copper on it; and on this one, fragments of four kinds of lead. In the argentiferous galena is a very considerable proportion of silver. Here is a piece of a mineral called molybdena of singular beauty, I found it at Gaberous Bay, in Cape Breton. The iron ores you see are of great variety. The coal-fields of this colony are immense in extent, and incalculable in value. All this case is filled with their several varieties. These precious stones are from the Bay of Fundy. Among them are amethyst, and other varieties of crystal, of quartz, henlandite, stibite, a.n.a.lcine, chabasie, albite, nesotype, silicious sinter, and so on. Pray do me the favour to accept this amethyst. I have several others of equal size and beauty, and it is of no use to me."

He also presented Cutler with a splendid piece of nesotype or needle stone, which he begged him to keep as a memento of the "Bachelor Beaver's-dam."

"Three things, Mr Slick," he continued, "are necessary to the development of the mineral wealth of this province--skill, capital, and population; and depend upon it the day is not far distant, when this magnificent colony will support the largest population, for its area, in America."

I am not a mineralogist myself, Squire, and much of what he said was heathen Greek to me, but some general things I could understand, and remember such as that there are (to say nothing of smaller ones) four immense independent coal-fields in the eastern section of Nova Scotia; namely, at Picton, Pomquet, c.u.mberland, and Londonderry; the first of which covers an area of one hundred square miles: and that there are also at Cape Breton two other enormous fields of the same mineral, one covering one hundred and twenty square miles, and presenting at Lingan a vein eleven feet thick. Such facts I could comprehend, and I was sorry when I heard the bugle announcing that the boat had returned for us.

"Jessie," said the doctor, "here is a little case containing a curiously fas.h.i.+oned and exquisitely worked ring, and a large gold cross and chain, that I found while searching among the ruins of the nunnery at Louisburg. I have no doubt they belonged to the superior of the convent. These baubles answered her purpose by withdrawing the eyes of the profane from her care-worn and cold features; they will serve mine also, by showing how little you require the aid of art to adorn a person nature has made so lovely."

"Hallo!" sais I to myself, "well done, Doctor, if that don't beat c.o.c.k-fighting, then there ain't no snakes in Varginny, I vow. Oh! you ain't so soft as you look to be after all; you may be a child of nature, but that has its own secrets, and if you hain't found out its mysteries, it's a pity."

"They have neither suffered," he continued, "from the corrosion of time nor the asceticism of a devotee, who vainly thought she was serving G.o.d by voluntarily withdrawing from a world into which he himself had sent her, and by foregoing duties which he had expressly ordained she should fulfil. Don't start at the sight of the cross; it is the emblem of Christianity, and not of a sect, who claim it exclusively, as if He who suffered on it died for them only. This one has. .h.i.therto been used in the negation of all human affections, may it shed a blessing on the exercise of yours."

I could hardly believe my ears; I didn't expect this of him. I knew he was romantic, and all that; but I did not think there was such a depth and strength of feeling in him.

"I wish," I said, "Jehu Judd could a heard you, Doctor, he would have seen the difference between the clear grit of the genuine thing and a counterfeit, that might have made him open his eyes and wink."

"Oh! Slick," said he, "come now, that's a good fellow, don't make me laugh, or I shall upset these gla.s.s cases;" and before Jessie could either accept or decline this act of gallantry, he managed to lead the way to the lake. The girls and I embarked in the canoe, and the rest of the party in the boat, but before I stepped into the bark, I hid the pipes of Peter behind the body of the moose, very much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of Jessie and the doctor, who both seemed to agree with me in giving a preference to the bugle.

I never saw so lovely a spot in this country as the one we had chosen for our repast, but it was not my intention to land until the preparations for our meal were all fully completed; so as soon as Jane leaped ash.o.r.e, I took her place and asked Jessie to take another look at the lake with me. Desiring Jackson to recall us with his bugle when required, we coasted up the west side of the lake for about half a mile, to a place where I had observed two enormous birches bend over the water, into which they were ultimately doomed to fall, as the current had washed away the land where they stood, so as to leave them only a temporary resting-place. Into this arched and quiet retreat we impelled our canoe, and paused for awhile to enjoy its cool and refres.h.i.+ng shade.

"Jessie," said I, "this time to-morrow I shall be on the sea again."

"So soon?" she replied.

"Yes, dear; business calls us away, and life is not all like a day on the lake."

"No, no," she said, "not to me; it is the only really happy one I have spent since I left my country. You have all been so kind to me; you, the captain, and the doctor, all of you, you have made no difference, you have treated me as if I was one of you, as if I was born a lady."

"Hasn't the doctor always been kind to you?" I said.

"Oh, yes," she replied, "always very kind, but there is n.o.body here like him."

"He loves you very much."

"Yes," she said, in the most unembarra.s.sed and natural manner possible, "he told me so himself."

"And can't you return his love?"

"I do love him as I do my father, brother, or sister."

"Couldn't you add the word husband?"

"Never, never," she said, "Mr Slick. He thinks he loves me now, but he may not think so always. He don't see the red blood now, he don't think of my Indian mother; when he comes nearer perhaps he will see plainer. No, no, half-cast and outcast, I belong to no race. Shall I go back to my tribe and give up my father and his people? they will not receive me, and I must fall asleep with my mother. Shall I stay here and cling to him and his race, that race that scorns the half-savage? never! never! when he dies I shall die too. I shall have no home then but the home of the spirits of the dead."

"Don't talk that way, Jessie," I said, "you make yourself wretched, because you don't see things as they are. It's your own fault if you are not happy. You say you have enjoyed this day."