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The, Annual Meeting of the Members of the above Institution, was held on Thursday,
The Chairman, before calling upon the Secretary to read the report, said that since his term of office in connection with the Institution, he did not recollect a year during which the Committee had laboured under circumstances so embarrassing as they experienced last winter. He regretted to say that owing to the want of funds the Committee could not satisfy the claims of many needy persons, and the Committee gradually drifted into so bad a position that they felt they would be compelled either to close the doors of the Institution and cease to give relief, or take steps to meet only the most urgent cases. They decided, in fact, under the extreme circumstances of the case, to render assistance only to the absolutely destitute. Lacking sufficient information, the Committee perhaps, had sometimes erred, but even supposing that to be the case, the children had always benefited. The difficulties which the retiring Committee had encountered would also have to be faced by the incoming one. Great efforts must be made to increase the funds of the
The Secretary of the Institution (Mr J. S. Hickson) then read the Report of the Committee, Medical Report, and Financial Statement.
The Rev. Dr Stuart said he did not take the despondent view of matters that the Committee seemed to do, for their experience during the past year was also the experience of Committees from time immemorial, viz., great claims upon the funds of the Institution, and little coming in to meet them. But it had always happened that funds were ultimately forthcoming, and therefore he hoped the Committee would continue in office. In the future they would no doubt have similar experiences, meet with similar difficulties, and achieve similar victories. He wished they could adopt some plan whereby the co-operation and assistance, not only of the people of Dunedin, but of those throughout the Province, would be obtained. Those who knew anything about the working of the Poor Law system in Great Britain would not wish to see it m vogue in Otago; because if a Benevolent Institution was expensive, a poor law system would be ten times more so. It vexed him to find that some sons were so mean-spirited as to allow their aged parents to apply for and receive aid from the Benevolent Institution. Of course, the Committee could not refuse to assist poor miserable creatures, but he would really like to find the settlers of Otago frowning upon those
The Rev. Mr Edwards seconded the motion.
Mr A. Bonnie, on rising to support the motion, said he regretted to see an attendance so small. No doubt, if it were a meeting for the choice of a member or members for the Town Council, or for some similar purpose, numerous persons would be found seeking the honour; but it really did seem that people did not think it worth while countenancing and taking part in the proceedings of an Institution of that kind. Some suggesion had been made to the Committee by the Rev. Dr Stuart; but he (Mr Rennie) did not see that the Committee could do more than they had already done. In one sense they had worked for the sake of the poor, and in another, for the sake of the public, because if the Committee had not done so, the Government would have been obliged to take steps to meet the difficulty. Although they did not wish to see an assessment introduced in order to meet the wants of the poor, he was not sure if it would not ultimately come to that. It really appeared that at the present time it was the best of the two evils. For what was the fact? Reports were made every year of the want of funds, and of the poor being neglected in consequence. It was very painful to the Com-
The Chairman said he wished to make a few remarks in reply to what the Rev. Dr. Stuart had said regarding the "spotting" of those persons able to assist. The Committee had always done so, and he thought it was an opportune time to express the gratitude of the Committee to those—districts, he meant, not individuals—that had liberally subscribed. He would mention Lawrence, for instance. The people there were not urged to subscribe, but they had subscribed liberally and willingly. He might state further that on the 24th October a circular, of which the following is a copy, was sent to clergymen:—
"Sir,—The funds of the Institution being at present almost exhausted, and the calls made upon them being more than ordinarily heavy (the out-door relief alone during the winter months averaging from £25 to £26 per week), the Committee feel confident that in the cause of charity the various Churches throughout the Province will render help, by making special collections in aid of the above charitable Institution. I have therefore the honour, by direction of the Committee, to request that you will be so good as to accord your support in the above manner at as early a date as you may deem proper. This appeal is reluctantly made, owing mainly to the subsidy given by the Government having been reduced from £2 to £1 to £1 subscribed. Should the result of this appeal not be favourable, the Committee fear that they will be compelled to withhold out-door relief entirely.—I have, &c., John S. Hickson, Secretary." He might also say that the Committee had been driven to the extremity of asking for accommodation at the Bank, to enable them to meet their liabilities, leaving the question of relief out of consideration.
The Rev. Dr. Stuart: Does the Government contribute £2 towards the making of roads?
The Chairman : No, £1.
The Rev. Dr Stuart: Oh, I was afraid they dealt more liberally with roads than with humanity.
The Chairman : The following circular was also sent, at the same time, to the laity:—
"Sir,—I have the honour, by direction of the Committee of
John S. Hickson, Secretary."
The Committee's report, and report of the Medical Officer, and balance sheet were adopted.
The re-election of the following office-bearers took place:—President, Mr A. C. Strode; Vice-Presidents, Mr Wilkie and Mr R. B. Martin; Treasurer, Mr R. B. Martin; Members of Committee, Messrs J. Mollison, James Fulton, J, Paterson, and R. A. Lawson. The following new members of Committee were also elected:—Messrs A. Rennie, R. Oliver, G. P. Farquhar, and James Galbraith.
A vote of thanks having been unanimously passed to Mr Hardy for auditing the accounts, and to the Chairman for presiding, the meeting separated.
I have much satisfaction in being able to report that during the past year the health of the inmates of the Benevolent Institution has been, on the whole, good.
Amongst so large a number of very young children and of old people, it is a source of congratulation to say that no death has occurred in the twelvemonths now completed. There can be no doubt but that this excellent state of things is mainly attributable to the scrupulous observance of cleanliness and ventilation, and in this respect, as well as in their attention to the sick, the Master and Matron are deserving of all praise. There have, however, been several cases of illness—some of them severe—many of the old men suffer from some form or other of senile ailments. All the children, and many of the adults have been thoroughly vaccinated in four places, and this whether there had been previous vaccination or not. The epidemic of whooping-cough that has been so prevalent in town, has so far, not visited the Institution. I fear, however, that our good fortune in this respect has ended, as one case has made its appearance.
Many of the outdoor recipients of the Charity have been invalids, and whenever necessary, have received medical assistance.
To Relieve the Aged, Infirm, Disabled, and Destitute of all Creeds and Denominations, Afford them Medical Relief, and to Minister to them the Comforts of Religion.
1. Every donor of £20 or upwards shall be a Qualification of Life Governors.
2. Every Subscriber of one guinea, or upwards, Qualifications Members.
3. There shall be in the mouth of January in Annual General Meeting in the mouth of January.
4. The Office-bearers of the Institution shall Office-bearers to be elected annually.ex officio Members), to be elected at the Annual General Meeting, by and from among the Life Governors and Members.
Ex officio members of Committee.ex officio Members of Committee; but no ex officio Members, except Honorary Office-bearers, shall vote on the removal or appointment of any paid servant of the Institution.
Committee meetings, when to be held.
Who to preside at Committee meetings.
Committee to frame Bye-laws and Regulations
Special General Meeting of Sub-scribers, how to be convened.
Bye-laws to be repealed only at Special Meetings.
How appointments are to be made by the Committee.
12. There shall be two or more Medical Officers, Honorary Medical Officers and their qualifications.
13. The Honorary Medical Officers shall be Appointment of Honorary Medical Officers and filling up of vacancies.
14. That the Honorary Medical Officers shall How Medical Officers shall report.
15. That no application be received unless Conditions of Admission to Institution.
16. Tenders for all supplies shall be invited for Tenders to be called for supplies.
17. The House Visiting Committee, consisting of House Visiting Committee, how to be appointed.
18. It shall be their duty to visit the Institu- Duties of Visiting Committee.
19. The Superintendent, or other officer ap- Management of Institution.
20. The inmates of the Institution will be Religions instruction.
The Annual Meeting of Subscribers to the Otago Benevolent Institution was held in the Offices, Farley's Buildings, on Thursday,
The Chairman stated that he had only to regret—as he regretted at almost every previous Meeting of the Institution—that there was such a small number of Subscribers present. There was nothing very special to call attention to on the present occasion; but he might say that the Institution had relieved a large amount of distress during the past year, and that the public had come forward very liberally. There were one or two things to which he would like to call the attention of the Meeting. The experience of the past showed that the now incoming Committee would have to grapple with a growing evil—namely, the frequent desertion of wives and families by lazy or drunken husbands. In fact, there was little doubt that this matter called loudly for legislation. Another point was, that the Committee should have power to apprentice or hire out children, and to recover their wages, or enter into agreements on their account. The third point was, a recommendation to the Government to provide a home for inebriates of both sexes. If that were done, one-half of the distress at present existing would be put a stop to. The Report prepared by the Committee would be read, and it would then be for the meeting to say whether the Committee had performed their duty.
The Secretary read the following
In laying the Eleventh Annual Report before the Subscribers, the Committee of Management regret that during the past
2. With respect to the direct work of the Institution for the year—15 children, 13 men, and 3 women have been admitted. During the same period 7 boys and 8 girls have been placed out, and 3 boys and 3 girls have been taken out by relations. 2 adult males have been discharged for misconduct, and 1 adult female has gone to a situation. The total number remaining is 32 boys, 23 girl, 17 men, and 4 women. Of the adults, one is blind, and nearly all are helpless cripples, requiring personal attendance.
3. The average number of inmates in the Institution during the past year has been about the same as in
4. The health of the inmates has continued excellent, no serious case of sickness having occurred. There have been no deaths during the year. The Committee record their appreciation of the care and attention of the medical officer, both as regards inmates and out-door patients.
5. The vacancy caused by the resignation of Mrs. Turner as matron has been filled up by the appointment of Mrs. Drysdale.
6. The school work has progressed satisfactorily, as hitherto, under the care of Miss Coxhead, who has now resigned. She leaves with the best wishes of the Committee, who desire to recognise her readiness at all times and in every way to forward the interests of the Institution, with which she has been connected since its opening.
7. The religious instruction to the Protestant children and inmates has been satisfactorily attended to by Mr. Macfie, who has been assiduous in his attention.
8. The Committee express their grateful thanks to the several churches for their annual offertories; to the several collectors, donors, and annual subscribers for their liberal support; and also to those who have otherwise contributed by their liberality to the entertainment and enjoyment of the inmates.
9. By reference to the Balance Sheet it will be observed that, as compared with last year, the Institution is now in a better financial position, although the actual receipts have been less. The amount of subscriptions has been nearly £400 more this year than last, and the expenditure has been nearly £200 less. The Committee regret to report that the Colonial Parliament has not yet consented to the endowment of public charities. They trust, however, that their successors in office will use every endeavour to obtain this necessary provision for charitable aid from the General Government.
10. Attached to this Report will be found the Medical Report, Balance Sheet, and Tabular Records of the operations of the Institution.
11. The Committee, before resigning their trust and offering themselves for re-election, would place on record their sorrow for the heavy loss the Charity has sustained in the death of their late Vice-President, James Wilkie, Esq. In closing their Report, they express their thankfulness for the results which have attended their labours. They have been enabled, by the assistance of a generous public, to relieve a large amount of distress, and to save, as they believe, a number of young persons from profligacy, vice, and misery. They solicit for their successors a continuance of the sympathy and support hitherto accorded to the Charity.
The following is taken from the balance sheets for the year:—
The Rev. Dr. Stuart said he had special pleasure in moving the adoption of the Report. He remembered that last year some members of the Committee were full of fears and misgivings as to the support the Institution was likely to get. He was sure that those members themselves would be delighted to find that their fears and misgivings had been so amply and effectually rebuked. The Report gratified himself in another way, inasmuch as it showed that their fellow-settlers, whatever might be their faults, were not backward in responding to the call of distress and misery. It did his heart good to see the heartiness with which citizens generally met such cases as arose
Mr. John Hislop seconded the adoption of the Report. It occurred to him that the satisfactory state of matters with regard to the hearty response made by the public this year was really brought about by the expressions of fear and misgiving referred to by Dr. Stuart. He had much pleasure in observing the satisfactory working of the Institution, and the large amount of good effected by it, not only in the case of inmates of the building, but also with respect to out-door cases. It was very pleasing to find that the Society's operations were so extensive and useful. He felt bound to attend the meeting, to give expression to his feelings of satisfaction and gratitude towards the Institution, and for the admirable manner in which it seemed to have been worked.
Mr. Rennie, referring to the increase of subscriptions, said that probably the statement made at a former meeting, that if the public did not come forward more liberally there would have to be a poor rate, had had a good effect. Although there was an increase in the subscriptions, he could say from his own knowledge that the sums subscribed were quite disproportionate to the subscribers' means. It would be much better for people who held immensely large properties in the Province to come forward liberally, and instead of giving £5, give £50. He was sure that if a poor rate were levied those people he referred to would have to pay perhaps £100 towards the support of the poor. There were many in the Province who were well able to contribute, but who did not contribute at all. He believed that ultimately, if poverty continued to increase, a poor rate would have to be levied. Such a rate would not be so heavy on those who contributed already, but it would fall heavily on those who at present refused to put their hands in their pockets to support this charitable Institution. He was afraid that the balance in hand at present was owing to the severe and pinching economy practised by the Committee.
The Chairman remarked that although the balance was at present in their favour, there were times during the year when the Committee were at dead low water. They then had to obtain an overdraft, and become personally responsible.
The following gentlemen were elected office-bearers for the
The meeting terminated with a vote of thanks to the retiring Committee and office-bearers.
I am glad to say that during the past year the health of the Inmates of the Benevolent Institution has been more than ordinarily good.
The chief important cases have been those of a surgical nature, and include two in which operations upon the eye were performed, and two of strangulated hernia or rupture—all terminating favourably. The old men have enjoyed moderately good health. Two of the number suffer from incurable paralysis, and are thereby rendered almost helpless.
It was considered advisable to send a woman, suffering from advanced consumption, to the Hospital. The children have been free from epidemic visitation, and are all at the present in good health. All are vaccinated. No death has occurred at the Institution during the year.
To Relieve the Aged, Infirm, Disabled, and Destitute of all Creeds and Nations, Afford them Medical Relief, and to Minister to them the Comforts of Religion.
1. Every donor of £20 or upwards shall be a Qualification of Life Governors.
2. Every Subscriber of one guinea or upwards Qualification of Members.
Annual General Meeting in the month of January.
Office-bearers to be elected annually.ex officio Members), to be elected at the Annual General Meeting, by and from among the Life Governors and Members.
Ex-officio Members of committee.ex officio Members of Committee; but no ex officio Members, except Honorary Office-bearers, shall vote on the removal or appointment of any paid servant of the Institution.
Committee Meetings, when to be held.
Who to preside at Committee meetings.
8. The Committee shall frame such Bye-laws Committee to frame Bye-laws and Regulations.
9. The Committee of Management may convene Special General Meeting of Subscribers, how to be convened.
10. No bye-law or regulation shall be altered Bye-laws to be repealed only at special meetings.
11. That in electing to any appointment by How appointments are to be made by the Committee.
12. There shall be two or more Medical Officers, Honorary Medical Officers and their qualifications.
13. The Honorary Medical Officers shall be Appointment of Honorary Medical Officers and filling up of vacancies.
14. That the Honorary Medical Officers shall How Medical Officers shall re-port.
Conditions of admission to Institution.
Tenders to be called for sup-plied.
House Visiting Committee, how to be appointed.
Duties of Visiting Committee.
Management of Institution.
Religions instruction.
Printed at "Daily Times" Office, Rattray Street, Dunedin.
The Annual Meeting of Subscribers to the Otago Benevolent Institution was held in the Offices, Farley's Buildings, on Thursday,
In submitting their Twelfth Annual Report, the Committee regret to Sate that they have been called upon to relieve a more than usual amount of distress, especially during the last six months. This may to some extent be attributed to the large increase of population through Immigration, inasmuch as amongst those persons who have been sent, out here at the expense of the Colony, a considerable number may well be designated "trained paupers," while others are physically unfit tor labour. Of these latter, several heads of families have died, leaving their wives and children dependent upon the funds of the Institution.
The increased expenditure may be further explained by the large number of accidents which have occurred throughout the Province, in which cases wives and families have been left destitute;
2. By the payment of passages of persons who were a burden on the funds, and would otherwise have been unable to reach their friends, who would support them;
3. By the scarcity of houses as compared with the increased population in Dunedin and its neighbourhood, with the consequent increase in rents, creating such a difficulty in finding house accommodation, that the Committee were compelled to apply to the Provincial Government for the temporary use of the Old Police Barracks in Princes Street, in which six families, numbering 36 persons, are now located.
The sum expended in out-door relief during the year amounted to £956 18s. 7d., of which £267 10s. 6d was paid for rent. The number of persons thus relieved averaged weekly 74; the total number during the year being—adult (males), 203; adult (females), 878; and children, 2756.
In consequence of the increase in the number of male adults at the Institution, especially during the winter months, when it reached 29, the Committee were compelled to enlarge the quarters occupied by them at a cost of £150.
The great want of water at the Institution, especially during the summer, induced the Committee to take advantage of the Company's water, from which source the whole Institution is now efficiently supplied.
Among several improvements contemplated, it is proposed to provide a small detached Sanitarium, to meet any cases of contagious diseases that may occur, no proper provision having been previously made to meet such epidemics as have recently been prevalent in the Province. The Committee appeal to the Public to aid them as heretofore in carrying out any necessary alterations which may be required for the comfort of the inmates.
The average number of Inmates in the Institution during the past year was 78, at a weekly cost of 7s. 5d. per head.
The number of Inmates in the Institution on the
The number of admissions during the year was, male adults, 18; female adults, 3; boys, 1; girls, 8.
The Committee have placed at service during the year 3 boys and 4 girls, and have much pleasure in reporting as to their general good conduct in their various places of service.
On the resignation of Miss Coxhead as schoolmistress, Miss Wilson was appointed to the vacancy, and the Committee have much pleasure in testifying to the uniform attention paid by her to her duties, and the steady progress made by her pupils.
The Committee, deeming it advisable, both for the sake of economy and better management, to combine the duties of Secretary and Master, appointed Mr. Richard Quin to this office, while Mrs. Quin has taken the place of Matron. Under this arrangement the Institution has, in their opinion, benefited considerably, especially in the increased number of donations and subscriptions.
The attention paid by the religious instructor (Mr. M 'Fie), to the Protestant children and inmates has been, as heretofore, highly satisfactory.
The Medical Report attached hereto, shows the general health of the inmates during the year. The Committee cannot but testify to the successful results arising, notwithstanding prevailing epidemics, from the assiduous attention of Dr. Hocken.
The Committee desire to acknowledge the generous support accorded during the past year by their many subscribers to a charity which has thus been enabled to afford relief to an unusually large amount of distress and destitution, and would commend to the consideration of the public generally the example of those who contribute annually to the funds of the Institution, particularly as every deserving case of distress is relieved without regare to creed or nationality.
The Committee deem it necessary to caution the public against giving money to the several systematic beggars who are in the habit of imposing on the charitable, and request that applicants for relief be referred to the Secretary, Mr. Quin, who is authorised to relieve all urgent and deserving cases.
The Balance Sheet having been read,
The Rev. Dr. Stuart said that, as one of the oldest friends of this valuable Institution, he considered it a great privilege to have an opportunity of moving the adoption of the report. He had listened to the introductory remarks of the Chairman, and in the main concurred with them—as to the causes which had led to such considerable demands upon this Institution. Doubtless, thriftless persons had in some way or another found their way to Otago, and those people had been a
Mr. Maitland seconded the adoption of the report, and in doing so, said he fully concurred with the remarks of the last speaker as to the benefits which flowed from the Institution. He had himself witnessed its good efforts, not only in the town, but also in the country districts.
The report and balance-sheet were unanimously adopted.
The following gentlemen were elected office-bearers for the ensuing year:—President, Mr. A. C. Strode; Vice-President
The Rev. Dr. Stuart said the subscribers to the Benevolent Institution were glad to see present at their meeting a number of ladies who had always been friends to the Institution. He was sure the ladies had some motion or message to bring before them, and doubtless the meeting would be glad to hear what it was.
The Ven. Archdeacon Edwards stated that he had been asked to explain the business which had brought the ladies to the meeting. It was well known to all that there were a great many young girls here who became mothers without being married. It was a melancholy fact that a good many of the children of these unhappy girls were sent out to nurse and died if the payments from the mother ceased. This was an awful fact, and it was a question whether it was not a duty to meet that evil, and put a stop to such a painful state of things. What the ladies present wished to suggest was whether something ought not to be done to meet the difficulty at the Benevolent Asylum. So far as he understood, at the present moment there were two uninhabited rooms at the Institution which could be used for the purpose. He was quite aware that there were one or two objections which might be urged against the proposal. It might be said that the expense would be very great. That was perfectly true; but the Benevolent Institution was largely supported by the Government, and the evil could be much better met by means of the existing Institution than by establishing another. Again, it might be said that the taking of such a step would be an encouragement to vice. Of course, there was something in that, but if those wretched children were left to die, it seemed to him as if they were visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, which was surely not right. He hoped the Committee of the Institution would take this matter into their earnest consideration, and see whether something could not be done in connection with the Institution to meet the wishes of those ladies whose cause he was supporting.
The Chairman thought this was a very large question, and he might say on behalf of the Committee that they would
Mrs. Muir said that having been one of the first connected with the Institution, she might say that she was under the impression that it was formed principally for orphans. When the place was built, the rooms were laid out for that purpose. For several years there were no adult inmates. Hence the appointment of a teacher, nurses, and other officers of the Institution. Afterwards, adults were admitted. So far as she understood, the building was certainly erected for children.
The Chairman thought Mrs. Muir was labouring under a mistake. So far as this Institution was concerned, he might say that he was the first person who wrote about it in the newspapers in Daily Times, and the result was the formation of the Institution. It was never contemplated at that time, nor at any other time, that children should be admitted; but, as he had said, the force of circumstances had compelled them to do so. Their rules were a transcript of those of the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, which had never admitted a child within its walls. He might say, in connection with what Archdeacon Edwards had stated, that the Committee would take the whole matter into consideration, and would endeavour to meet, as far as they could, the wishes of the ladies. Probably it would be just as well if Mrs. Muir and the other ladies who interested themselves in the matter would lay some scheme before the Committee, because it would be desirable to have something definite before them. Perhaps it would be desirable for the Committee to know how the extra funds for the support
The Rev. Dr. Stuart hoped that when the scheme referred to by the Chairman was laid before the Committee, the ladies would take care to furnish some statistics. For example, he did not know the rate of illegitimacy in the Province. He knew that illegitimacy did exist in the Province, and he could testify to the truth of the remark made by Archdeacon Edwards that from one cause and another, very many illegitimate children died. But it was another question whether the present proposition was the best remedy for the misery that illegitimacy occasioned. He did not think it was. In his day he had looked into the history of such institutions, and what did he find? As far as his reading went, foundling institutions led to an increase of illegitimacy. They knew that in France, before the Revolution, when foundling institutions prevailed, it was a common thing for people after marriage to agree between themselves that the children of their marriage should be dropped into the Foundling Institution. Rousseau and his wife made such an agreement, and gloried in it. Six children born to them were put into such an institution. Such institutions tend to keep down family life in France, and in his judgment came to be one of the chief causes of the destructive Revolution. The misery that had excited the compassion of the ladies of Dunedin ought to be met and relieved. He thought the right way of relieving it was to send those children to individual families, and not to mass them together in the Benevolent Institution, because he thought it could be shown that there was great moral danger in the latter course. He thought the establishment of a Refuge such as was proposed, would cause a great increase of illegitimacy; and further, it would be absolutely impossible to get anything from the fathers for the support of the children. As for the mothers, they would change their situations, and it would cost more money to prosecute them than could be obtained from them for the support of the children. Of course, they were thankful to the ladies for looking abroad at the misery that existed, and for seeking to relieve it, but he ventured to differ from their judgment as to the best way of affording relief, and he for one was not prepared, as a subscriber, to support the establishment of a foundling department in connection with this Institution.
Mr. R. B. Martin thought it would be a pity to allow the ladies to go away without showing that the Committee had frequently cases before them of the kind now referred to. It was nothing unusual for the committee to be applied to for temporary relief by women either before entering, or after leaving, the hospital. They had always been ready and willing to give such temporary relief, but they had always set their faces against admitting the children into the Institution. They used to take the children and put them out to board, but in those cases the parents afterwards absconded.
The Rev. Dr. Stuart pointed out to the ladies that they might confer a great benefit by seeing that those young women, after their confinement, were allowed to remain a longer time in the Hospital than appeared to be usual.
One of the ladies explained that they had already taken several women into the Refuge from the Hospital.
The Chairman said it was considered undesirable in England to herd together large numbers of children. It was found in practice to be most mischievous. He would be a strong advocate for taking the children out of the Benevolent Institution, or even out of the Industrial School, and placing them in families of twos and threes.
Mrs. Muir explained that the ladies wanted to know what they were to do with the children, who were in their way at the Refuge. Everything done by the Institution was subsidised by a large amount, but it would be very hard to get anything in the way of a subsidy for a new institution Perhaps, this movement would be better supported in connection with an institution that was well known than if anything fresh was started.
The Ven. Archdeacon Edwards thanked the Committee for having promised to take this matter into consideration. He was very glad this discussion had taken place, and that some light had thus been thrown on the subject. The ladies would do what had been suggested in the way of furnishing the Committee with a statement of their views.
The meeting then terminated with a vote of thanks to the Chairman.
During the past year the cases of illness in the Institution have been unusually numerous and severe.
The prevalent epidemic of measles has not spared us, forty-three of the children, being indeed all those who had not previously suffered from the disease, having been affected in batches of from two to ten at a time. Many cases were very severe, and were followed by various other affections; all, however, recovered. Amongst the number were two adults, one whose age bordered on seventy; this man had a secondary attack of bronchitis.
I must here be allowed to say how efficiently the invalids were tended by the matron, Mrs. Quin, and by Gertrude Thorough good, the latter of whom voluntarily added to her daily duties most valuable services as a sick nurse.
Two deaths occurred during the year, one in the person of an old man, a negro, who died from erysipelas, followed by gangrene; the other of a girl eight years old from diphtheria. Immediate measures were taken to prevent the spread of this latter malignant disease; these were fortunately successful, as no fresh instances occurred. There were also two other cases of erysipelas. Amputation at the thigh was resorted to in the case of a man who had suffered for a long time previously from an exceedingly painful affection. The operation succeeded in perfectly relieving the patient, who will, moreover, be now able to walk when supplied with an artificial leg.
There were numerous other illnesses, which do not require any special reference.
All the children are vaccinated. The health of the inmates is now good; and as recently great improvements have been made in the drainage, it is to be hoped that the great good fortune of sound health, which for so many years attended the inmates of the Institution, will revisit them during the coming year.
To Relieve the Aged, Infirm, Disabled, and Destitute of all Creeds and Nations, Afford them Medical Relief, and to Minister to them the Comforts of Religion.
1. Every donor of £20 or upwards shall be a Qualification of Life Governors.
2. Every Subscriber of one guinea or upwards Qualification of Members.
Annual General Meeting in the month of January.
Office-bearers to be elected annually.ex officio Members), to be elected at the Annual General Meeting, by and from among the Life Governors and Members.
Ex-officio Members of Committee.ex officio Members of Committee; but no ex officio Members, except Honorary Office-bearers, shall vote on the removal or appointment of any paid servant of the Institution.
Committee Meeting, when to be held.
Who to preside at Committee Meetings.
8. The Committee shall frame such Bye-laws Committee to frame Bye-laws and Regulations.
9. The Committee of Management may convene Special General Meeting of Sub-scribers, how to be convened.
10. No bye-law or regulation shall be altered Bye-laws to be repealed only at special meetings.
11. That in electing to any appointment by Honorary Medical Officers and their qualifications.
12. There shall be two or more Medical Officers, How appointments are to be made by the Committee.
13. The Honorary Medical Officers shall be Appointment of Honorary Medical Officers and filling up of vacancies.
14. That the Honorary Medical Officers shall How Medical officers shall re-port.
Conditions of admission to Institution.
Tenders to be called for sup-plies.
House Visiting Committee, how to be appointed.
Duties of Visiting Committee.
Management of Institution.
Religious instruction.
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Since the publication of Lord St. Leonard's Handy Book of Property Law, popular manuals on scientific subjects have needed no apology. The following little work is not intended to enable people to treat themselves, except in the very simplest cases; it is rather designed to enable them to form some idea of the causes, the symptoms, the treatment, and the probable results of some of the most frequently occurring diseases to which the English are subject.
There are few questions so often put to medical men as—"What is the best thing to take for a cough ?" Yet a more useless question could hardly be put For a cough is a mere symptom, which may occur in the course of scores of diseases, each one requiring its own especial treatment.
To give the reader some slight idea of the multitude of diseases of which cough is one of the symptoms, let me mention a few. It may be caused by congestion, inflammation or ulceration of the mucous membrane covering the fauces (or inside of the throat), by congestion or inflammation, (simple or diphtheritic), or ulceration or abscess of the tonsils, by simple enlargement of those organs, by the same affections of the soft palate, by cancerous disease of any of the previously named parts, by elongated uvula, by polypi in the fauces, by œdema of the epiglottis, by inflammation or ulceration of the epiglottis, by acute or chronic laryngitis, by tubercular ulceration of the larynx, by foreign bodies, as fish bones, &c., pressing on the larynx, by foreign bodies in the larynx, by tumours, simple or malignant, or by aneurisms pressing on it, or by the same diseases of the trachea or windpipe, or by tumours or aneurisms pressing on it, or foreign bodies within it or external to it. Here we have enumerated between thirty and forty distinct diseases which may cause cough, without going beyond the windpipe, without mentioning a single one of the numerous diseases of the lungs and other organs within the chest, which may be accompanied by this symptom. It is true that some of these diseases are rare, but others are very common, and as, until a proper examination has been made, it is impossible to know which of them may be the cause of the cough, it must be perfectly plain, that to say what is the best thing for a cough is by no means a simple or easy matter.
It will be obvious that within the limits of this little work, it is out of the question to attempt a description of all the diseases which occasion cough. To do so would require a large volume. I shall therefore confine myself to those which are the most common, and consequently the most important, and which produce probably ninetenths or more of all the cases of cough met with in medical practice.
It may be asked how are the causes of the different species of cough to be discovered? There is only one way by which it can be done with any approach to certainty, and that is by a physical examination of the chest and air passages. That is to say, by listening with or without the aid of the stethoscope to the sounds produced by the breathing, the voice, and the cough,—this is called auscultation; by inspection of the air passages so far as they are visible, and of the form of the chest, its expansion and contraction, &c.; by percussion, or striking the chest gently with the fingers or some instrument, so as to judge by the sound produced, whether the parts beneath are occupied by solids, fluids, air, or healthy tissues; by palpation, or touching the chest, &c.. so as to feel its contraction and expansion, and the sensation produced by the voice or cough of the patient; by mensuration or measuring the diameter, the circumference, and the depths of different parts or opposite sides of the chest, and by succussion and some others not often employed. It may not be needful to use all these methods of physical examination in every case; indeed it is seldom that all are required, but auscultation, palpation, and percussion should be used in every case, unless the cough is obviously caused by some form of sore throat. The man who makes a practice of treating coughs without auscultation is a quack, whatever diplomas he may possess. Some few medical men profess to sneer at these means of diagnosis even in these days, but they are invariably persons whose medical education has been of the most imperfect kind, and who are quite ignorant of the subject.
The popular term "sore throat" includes a large number of diseases seated in and about the back part of the mouth and the upper part of the larynx, or entrance to the windpipe. Like most popular terms, it does not admit of strict definition. It may mean a mere congestion of the mucous membrane, attended with slight hoarseness; or it may mean a severe inflammation of the soft palate, tonsils and neighbouring parts, running on to ulceration or abscess.
The general symptoms of inflammatory sore throat, are pain, often-times very severe, in the part affected, greatly increased by swallowing, or attempts to swallow, hoarseness of the voice, sometimes increasing to such an extent that the voice becomes a mere whisper, a profuse secretion of slimy mucus, which at first is exceedingly difficult and painful to get rid of, and cough of a very irritating and harsh kind. These local symptoms are accompanied for the most part with a general feverishness, marked by a quick pulse, a hot, dry skin, a white and furred tongue, thirst, loss of appetite, and not seldom pains in the back and limbs, and other symptoms of catarrh.
If the complaint runs on unchecked, the local symptoms become more severe. The secretion of mucus is more profuse, and is generally accompanied by great secretion of saliva, the pain and difficulty of swallowing are greater, so that even fluids can only be swallowed in very small quantities, and produce a feeling of suffocation; the tonsils enlarge to such an extent that they nearly meet, and difficulty of breathing is added to the other symptoms; abscesses may form in the tonsils, and the complaint is then called quinsey, or without going into abscess, superficial ulceration may take place on the mucous membrane of the tonsils or palate. If abscess occurs the symptoms are generally greatly relieved as soon as the abscess breaks or is opened.
On examining the throat internally, in the first stage of the complaint, the whole of the mucous membrane is seen to be of a much deeper colour than that of the rest of the mouth, often a deep crimson tint, it is greatly swollen, as may be seen by the thickening of the soft palate and uvula. In the more advanced stages, the tonsils are greatly enlarged so as to form projecting tumours. In this stage there is considerable swelling externally, and pressure below the ears, under the jaw, gives great pain.
In persons subject to quinsey, the inflammation commences in the tonsils and extends to the rest of the throat, and the tonsils swell with great rapidity, and often in the course of twenty-four or six-and-thirty
The causes of inflammatory sore throat are generally, either exposure to wet and cold, great exertion of the muscles as in speaking, the presence of an epidemic, or direct contagion.
Some persons are peculiarly liable to sore throat. If they get their feet wet, or are exposed to a cold wind, or even a slight draught, if they stand or sit in damp clothes, if in short they expose themselves to any of those influences which commonly produce what is called a "cold," they are immediately attacked with sore throat. Those whose profession requires long and severe exertion of the voice, such as clergymen or barristers, are also peculiarly liable to sore throat. Sore throat is often epidemic, and I have always noticed that at times when scarlatina is epidemic, sore throat is so also. It frequently happens that when the children in a house are laid up with scarlatina, the adults are suffering from sore throat. It is always very difficult to prove contagion, but I think it is generally acknowledged that simple inflammatory sore throat may be contagious, as diphtheritic sore throat undoubtedly is.
Treatment.—If sore throat of an inflammatory kind attacks a robust and healthy person, and is accompanied by much pain in swallowing, a few leeches may, with great advantage, be applied behind the jaw on each side. A couple on each side will be quite sufficient. If thought desirable, the wounds may be encouraged to bleed for a short time after the leeches have fallen off, by fomentations of warm water. A large warm linseed-meal poultice should always be applied, reaching from ear to ear, under the chin. If the complaint is attacked in its first stage, an emetic of half-a-drachm of ipecacuanha powder will sometimes apparently cut it short. At the same time, should the bowels be confined, it will be well to clear them out by a four or five grain blue pill, followed by a dose of castor oil or senna. The steam of hot water should be inhaled; and warm water, either alone, or rendered more pleasant and demulcent by the addition of gum, or an infusion of linseed frequently sipped. It is exceedingly useful in this stage to paint the affected parts with a pretty strong solution of nitrate of silver. This will, in many cases, materially shorten the duration of the malady, but it should not be used except by a professional man.
If these plans fail in arresting the disease, or if I have not been called in at the commencement, I generally give what I believe to have a specific action on inflammations of the mouth and fauces, namely, chlorate of potash. This compound has very great power over the complaint, both when applied locally in solution, as a gargle, and when taken internally. I disapprove, in toto, of giving a succession of salines and antimonials in this disease; they do far more harm than good. If the accompanying fever runs high, it may be better subdued by small doses of aconite, which will soon bring down the pulse without weakening the system. In robust persons the chlorate of potash may be used in combination with a dilute acid, as the dilute hydrochloric, and a little syrup. It may also be used as a gargle. I have, however, been in the habit of directing the patient to take it, not in large doses at intervals of three or four hours, but in frequent small doses every few
If the patient is weakly, quinine and chloric ether may be be added to the mixture, or decoction of cinchona bark with chloric ether. If after the violence of the inflammation has subsided the tonsils remain enlarged, or the mucous membrane thickened or relaxed, painting with a weak solution of nitrate of silver (5 grs. to the ounce of distilled water) will be very useful. At the same time, if necessary, the skin underneath the lower jaw may be painted twice a-day with tincture of iodine.
Persons who have repeatedly suffered from inflammatory sore throats will require something more. A blister to the neck, and the internal administration of iodide of potassium, together with astringent gargles, will be most useful.
The diet throughout the complaint should be nourishing. Strong beef tea will generally be required as soon as the patient is able to swallow, and in some cases stimulants. It is surprising how rapidly a lingering case of sore throat will get well by the use of vigorous measures. I was called in on one occasion by another medical man, to see a young lady whom he had been attending for live weeks, with severe tonsillitis, and general sore throat. There was great difficulty in swallowing, the tonsils were much enlarged, and the patient, though of a robust habit of body, reduced to a state of great weakness. I found the treatment had been a very lowering one, and the diet low also. I suggested tonic medicines, and two or three glasses of old port every day, together with plenty of eggs and beef tea, &c. The next day she was considerably better, and in three or four days she was so nearly well, as to require no further medical attendance.
Malignant sore throat, such as occurs in the severest forms of scarlatina, and diphtheritic sore throat, ate of course so dangerous as to be quite beyond the range of domestic medicine. They are marked by the great depression of strength which accompanies them.
The malignant sore throat of scarlatina is extremely fatal. It comes on early in the disease, sometimes on the first, sometimes on the second day of the rash. The throat swells both externally and internally, sloughs rapidly form on the tonsils : an offensive muco-purulent discharge proceeds from the mouth and nostrils; the patient's lips, teeth, and tongue are day and black; breathing is carried on with much difficulty, and is attended with frequent fits of coughing, which seem as if they would suffocate the patient. The pulse is from the first small and rapid, and the debility extreme. Gradually, if the case terminates fatally, the breathing becomes more and more laboured, the countenance livid, the pulse feebler and feebler, until death terminates a most painful scene.
The treatment is directed locally by powerful astringents, or caustics, to check the sloughing, by the internal administration of quinine or bark, together with brandy, wine, eggs, and beef tea to support the strength.
The peculiar form of sore throat, called diphtheria, has of late years attracted much attention, both on account of its great rarity
Diphtheria attacks all classes, but seems to be especially fatal among the well-fed and comfortably-housed members of the middle and upper classes. It frequently follows scarlatina and measles. There is considerable difference of opinion as to its real nature and causes, but one thing is clear,—that the true diphtheria is a deposit of a sort of false membrane, something like that of croup, on the mucous membrane of the tonsils, soft palate, uvula, &c., and extending into the pharynx, or opening of the gullet, and into the larynx or upper part of the windpipe, and upwards into the nostrils. This false membrane or diphtheritic deposit is of very various thicknesses. I have seen it so thin as to look like a patch of whity-brown paper, placed on the palate, and I have seen it as thick as washleather, and of very much the same colour and appearance. If removed by force, it is formed again in a few hours, unless at the same time the diseased state of the blood which causes the deposit, is removed or changed. Some cases are comparatively slight, that is to say the deposit of false membrane is not extensive, but all cases are dangerous and require the most prompt and active treatment.
A case or two will illustrate the subject better than a laboured description:
I was called up about 20 a.m. to see a young lady in London, at a time when diphtheria was very rife. When I reached the house I found my patient, (who was a delicate girl of about 12 years of age,) sitting up in bed, breathing laboriously, and troubled with a very harsh cough. On examining the throat, I found a well marked, but not very extensive diphtheritic deposit on both tonsils, the rest of the throat internally was red and inflamed, I found the pulse about 124 and very feeble and small. There was profuse ichorous discharge from both nostrils. The skin was soft and clammy. It was stated that the young lady had been suffering from a slight cold, as was supposed, for a few days, but went to bed tolerably well. In the night she awoke her parents by her loud harsh cough. The father immediately sent for me.
I at once applied a caustic to the throat in order to check the progress of the deposit: ordered a tablespoonful of port wine, and some strong beef tea every hour, and a draught containing ten grains of chlorate of potash, ten drops of muriated tincture of steel and chloric ether with water, every half-hour. I saw her again at 60 a.m. There was no further progress of the disease; the pulse was much slower and fuller, and the extremities warmer. From this time she gradually improved, and in two days the diphtheritic deposit had entirely disappeared. Now this was a very mild case, but had it not been treated promptly, it would doubtless have been very dangerous. The great depression of the vital powers so early in the disease, snowed that had it gone on a little longer unchecked, the result would have been very serious.
I was called in to a child on July 25th: he was suffering from severe sore throat immediately following scarlatina. On examination there
Another case which occurred about the same time, illustrates the milder form of the disease. A mother who was nursing her child in an attack of scarlatina, was herself attacked by the disease. On the second day of the eruption there was a well marked diphtheritic deposit on the tonsils and pillars of the fauces. The usual treatment was adopted, and the patient, who is a very sensible clear-headed woman followed up the orders about chlorine to the very letter. She rapidly recovered. In this as in all the other cases of diphtheria I have seen, amounting to about thirty, the debility, feebleness, and quickness of the pulse, were out of all proportion to the local symptoms, and required the most energetic use of stimulants and tonics. This is to my mind the most marked distinction between the ordinary sore throat and diphtheria.
The infant child of the above patient was subsequently attacked with diphtheria. The disease was at first confined to the tonsils and soft palate. There was very great difficulty in getting down either medicine, wine or beef tea. The child lingered for a fortnight. It had an abscess beneath the jaw which broke externally, and the wound took on the diphtheritic action. Ultimately the mouth was nearly covered with the deposit, but it was not until the disease attacked the larynx that the child died, which happened about three weeks after it was first attacked. This was the most protracted case I have ever seen.
In the fatal cases, the diphtheritic deposit covers the tonsils and soft palate, and extends sometimes into the windpipe. In many instances the patient undoubtedly dies suffocated, in some cases from suffocation and debility combined, and in others apparently more from the blood poisoning than from the local disease.
The treatment of this disease so formidable in itself, so dreadful when it enters a family, sweeping off, as it often does, three or four children one after another, has been the subject of much controversy. One point however is undoubted, that it is absolutely necessary to support the system in every way. For this purpose the most nutritious diet combined with stimulants will be required. In the bad cases, wine or even brandy must be given in quantities that seem startling to the uninitiated, and at intervals much shorter than is usual in most other diseases. It is trifling with a disease so rapid in its course, and
The local treatment must consist in poultices and fomentations externally, and caustics internally, if the disease is in its early stage, and within reach of caustics. It is useless to apply caustics in the most advanced stages, when the diphtheritic membrane has extended into the larynx. As for internal medicines, I have found the most useful to be a combination of chlorate of potash, muriated tincture of iron and quinine, taken in frequent small doses. The quinine is given in order to support the strength and counteract the debilitating effects of the blood poison. Of course particular symptoms will require their own especial treatment. There are also sequels of the disease which will need treatment, but the consideration of these would lead us too far from our immediate subject.
Plenty of chloride of lime should be kept in the patient's room, to which a little muriatic acid should be added occasionally. In this way more chlorine gas will be liberated than by merely using the chloride of lime. The chlorine acts as a disinfectant, and also as a local application of considerable power.
It is useless to dilate further on the treatment of this disease, since no one would ever think of undertaking a case of this kind, unless he were a fully qualified medical man.
We have spoken of several forms of acute sore throat, it now remains to say a few words upon the more chronic forms. These may follow the acute disease, or they may have arisen from repeated slight attacks of inflammation which have scarcely been noticed.
It is very common to find, on examining the throat, that the tonsils are greatly enlarged, the mucous membrane redder than natural, the blood vessels more prominent, and the uvula long and relaxed. The state of the throat causes no positive pain, and not much inconvenience. It causes a slight hawking cough, with the expectoration of a tough mucus, and a constant hoarseness and huskiness of the voice; but it renders the throat exceedingly liable to acute attacks of inflammation. A very slight cold will also cause such an aggravation of the symptoms as to produce great swelling of the tonsils, and a most harassing cough. The relaxed uvula, thus subjected to repeated attacks of inflammation, completely loses its power of contraction, becomes an inch long or even longer, hangs down and irritates the glottis, and causes attacks of un-controllable cough of the most distressing and painful kind.
Now in these cases a thorough cure ought to be effected as soon as this state of things is discovered, unless the patient prefers allowing the chronic inflammation to go on for the term of his natural life.
The cure may be effected in some cases without any medical treat-ment Whatever. Removal to a dry, hot climate, from England, will generally cure them thoroughly in two or three months. But people don't care to emigrate in order to get rid of a sore throat, nor do they
In tolerably recent cases, astringent gargles, containing alum or tannin, are very useful. A gargle of two drachms of dilute sulphuric acid, one drachm of tincture of capsicum, and eight ounces of water, is good when there is a relaxed condition of the uvula and tickling cough. At the same time blisters should be used externally, or a series of mustard plasters applied. Generally speaking tonic medicines are required, as the very existence of a chronic inflammation indicates a certain debility in the system. A generous diet, containing a fair allowance of wine or malt liquor is also necessary. With this, plenty of exercise in the fresh air, and well ventilated rooms are essential. In the more obstinate cases; with greatly enlarged tonsils, iodine may be given, either in the form of iodide of potassium, combined with infusion of quassia, or gentian, or cascarilla, or in the form of syrup of iodide of iron, a most useful and elegant preparation.
When iodine is necessary externally, it is well to blister with a strong solution of iodine applied to the neck.
Nitrate of silver, either in the solid form or in solution, may, as explained before, be used with great advantage. It should be applied daily, or every other day.
When the uvula has become very long it is impossible to bring it back to its natural state : the only remedy is the surgical one of cutting a piece off. This is done in a moment with a pair of scissors, and is perfectly effectual.
When repeated attacks of sore throat have taken place, the tonsils become permanently enlarged, and medicine has no effect on them; nor will any local applications bring them back to their healthy state. In these cases they must be removed by the knife. The operation is almost painless, and the cure is permanent and perfect.
If this were a systematic treatise, instead of a popular one of very small dimensions, I should speak of the various forms of laryngitis, especially of croupy laryngitis, before treating of bronchitis. But as these diseases are comparatively rare, and utterly beyond the range of domestic treatment, I shall merely mention that croup is of two kinds, the one spasmodic and comparatively harmless, the other inflammatory, attended by the production of a false membrane on the mucous membrane of the larynx, and fearfully fatal. Both are attended by a peculiar hard ringing metallic cough, which generally first comes on in the night. Not a moment should be lost in sending for medical assistance. The only thing the parents can safely do will be to administer an emetic of ipecacuanha, if that should be in the way, and to prepare the materials for a warm bath.
Bronchitis may be either acute or chronic. The acute variety may be either little more than a common cold, or a disease eminently dangerous to life, and requiring the utmost skill for its treatment.
Now, a great many people talk of having bronchitis, of suffering from bronchitis, of having just recovered from bronchitis, whose knowledge of the bronchi and of bronchitis is of the haziest description. But at a very trifling expenditure, any person may see what are the bronchi, and will be in a much better position to understand the symptoms of bronchitis. Let him purchase at the butcher's a pig's or sheep's "lights," i.e. lungs, and he will find that the windpipe, by which it is generally hungup in the shop, divides into two branches, which again divide and subdivide into innumerable ramifications: these are the bronchi or bronchial tubes. They consist of a number of incomplete rings formed of cartilage, which serve to maintain their shape; inside they are lined by a mucous membrane, continuous with the mucous membrane of the windpipe (or trachea). When this mucous membrane is inflamed the disease is called bronchitis.
It is attended in the very earliest stage by unnatural dryness of the membrane, but this very speedily gives way to over-secretion of the natural mucus of the part. This causes cough and expectoration, which is in some instances enormous. Supposing the case goes on favourably, after a time the secretion of mucus is lessened, the cough and expectoration lessen also, and ultimately cease. Now in acute cases bronchitis is attended with much fever, there is also some degree of pain on the affected side, but more of tightness and oppression upon the chest. Thus patients feel a constant disposition to sigh, but are unable to relieve themselves by doing so.
Instead of entering into an elaborate description of all the varieties of bronchitis, I shall merely state that this condition of the lung may be either acute or chronic, that it may attack one lung or both, and that it may involve only the larger divisions of the air-tubes, or extend to their minutest ramifications. Bronchitis may be caused by various things,—by cold, by the presence of tubercle in the lungs, as an accompaniment of several other diseases, such as measles, scarlatina, fever, disease of the kidneys, pneumonia, emphysema, and many others. It may also be caused by the irritation of small particles of dust, like the grinders' asthma (as it is called) of Sheffield, the potters' asthma in the Staffordshire Potteries, (both these diseases commencing with repeated attacks of bronchitis), or it may arise from unwholesome gases inhaled into the lungs. In all these instances however, the physical signs when the chest is examined are alike. We find sounds called rhonchi, indicating the presence of mucus in various states. In acute cases when the mucus is copious and fluid, we find crepitant rhonchus, in the later stages of the acute disease, and in chronic cases, we find cooing, whistling, sonorous and other rhonchi, indicating the presence of tough dryish mucus. At the same time, except in very young infants where collapse of the lung has taken place, percussion is much the same as in health. When the bronchitis is of very long standing and has given rise to other changes in the lung, the percussion sound may be altered.
Now bronchitis may be a very trifling or a very serious disease; it may require the most energetic treatment, continued day and night without intermission; or it may so little inconvenience or distress the patient as to require no treatment at all. Simple uncomplicated bronchitis, involving only one lung, ought always to be followed by perfect recovery. If a patient dies of it, he dies of the treatment, not of the disease. The tendency of bronchitis is always to recovery. What then are the reasons why death occurs in this disease?
In acute bronchitis death occurs, either because the original cause of the disease continues in action, and so one part of the lung after another is attacked, as is the case sometimes in consumption; or because both lungs are attacked, and the blood cannot be properly oxygenated, or the patient dies worn out by cough, rapid breathing and profuse discharge from the bronchial tubes. In chronic cases the patient dies from the changes produced in the lung, by repeated inflammatory attacks, and by heart disease, emphysema, and other secondary affections, the effects of which are aggravated by harassing cough, and in some cases enormous expectoration of mucus.
Mostly, however, in acute bronchitis, people die of the treatment, as Molière says, they die "of two physicians and an apothecary." Chronic bronchitis, though not rapidly, is surely fatal—unless cured. The person of fifty who has his or her attack of "winter cough and spitting," as soon as the cold weather sets in, will die of it in the course of a very few years, unless he or she obtain a speedy relief. It is quite a mistake to allow these attacks to wear themselves out, or to consider them as so much a matter of course that they need no treatment.
The treatment of acute bronchitis will differ very considerably in the infant and in the adult, or those beyond the age of infancy.
Bronchitis in the infant is generally called, even by medical men (of the old school), pneumonia. The fact is that in infants pneumonia is almost unknown. Some of the most scientific practitioners, and those who have had the greatest experience, have hardly ever seen a case of the disease. Speaking generally all those cases called "inflammations of the lung," in infants are cases of bronchitis.
Now these cases are exceedingly frequent, and their treatment is very much misunderstood. It is a very common practice to treat infants who are labouring under acute bronchitis, with lowering remedies, such as leeching, tartarized antimony, ipecacuanha, and even mercury in the shape of calomel, or grey powder. This is done because there is often—nay generally, high fever, indicated by rapid pulse, intensely hot skin, thirst, dry tongue, restlessness, &c. And yet if the lowering plan of treatment is adopted, it is almost sure to prove fatal. Ask any mother who has had a large family, and has lost several children, and she will be almost sure to tell you that some one or more of them "went off with the inflammation on the chest." It would be impossible to make intelligible to a non-professional reader, the condition of the lung described by the word "atalektasis," but it must suffice to say that as a consequence of infantile bronchitis the lung has a tendency to collapse, and resume the condition it had previous to birth.
The treatment of bronchitis must be directed to the prevention of this state, or to its removal when present. Hence from the very beginning a sustaining and stimulating plan must be adopted :—no antimony,—no ipecacuanha,—no leeches. Quinine, or the inspissated solution of bark or cinchonine, together with chloric ether, and accompanied by beef tea, and if need be, by wine or even brandy and water will prove almost universally successful. Under this kind of treatment I have never lost a case of bronchitis in an infant under two years of age, unless the child has been first seen by me when actually dying. I was called in to a child a few months ago for instance, who was already blue in the face and extremities, and although I have had several such cases recover, I do not consider them fair tests of the treatment.
Where both lungs are affected, it is absolutely necessary to give wine or brandy and water freely, or the infant will certainly sink. It may surprise many to hear of giving brandy and water to babes of only a few months old; but the experience of scores of cases has shown me, that it is not only harmless, but is essential to recovery. When this plan of treatment was first suggested to me, some six or seven years ago, I was as much astonished at it as any one could be. It seemed so contrary to all the traditions of medicine to give stimulants in any inflammatory disease with rapid pulse, and hot skin. At first I watched the cases most anxiously, seeing them every three or four hours, fearful lest any mishap might occur from the treatment. But I soon found that no fear need be entertained on that score. The good effect of the stimulants and tonics is almost invariable, the difficulty lies in getting parents to give them regularly, and to persevere long enough. I might quote a large number of cases, but one or two must suffice.
1st.—A child five weeks old; bronchitis in both lungs; loud mucous rales heard both in front and behind;—ordered half a teaspoonful of sherry every two hours, and a mixture with quinine, chloric ether,
On the 23rd, the child had its last bottle of medicine, being then only a little feeble and having a slight cough. Thus, in five days, a case of bronchitis affecting both lungs was cured.
2nd.—A child four months old; had been ill several days from bronchitis; had been under the treatment of the assistant of another practitioner, who had mistaken the case altogether, and treated it as a slight febrile attack. When I arrived the skin was hot, pulse rapid, lips livid, countenance dusky, and the breathing extremely feeble and shallow, with all the auscultatory signs of double bronchitis : ordered a teaspoonful of wine every half-hour, and the quinine mixture every hour. Beef tea ad libitum.
In the evening the child was somewhat better. The next day there was great improvement. The child was lively and had sucked a little. To continue the wine every hour.
The next day was summoned in great haste, it being stated that the child was dying. Found the statement correct, all the family in the room, the child almost comatose, lips, hands, &c. blue, and in a very much worse state than at first. Found that the parents had neglected giving the wine and medicine, thinking the child did not want it as it was so much better. Determined to save the child if possible, I immediately administered a teaspoonful of strong brandy and water (half and half), and stopped with the child, giving it the brandy and water myself every twenty minutes, for two or three hours. By this time the child was better, the pulse had rallied, and the skin was not so blue. Told the parents to give the brandy and water, every twenty minutes, till I came again. This was done, and in a few days the child was quite well. This case attracted a good deal of attention in the neighbourhood in which it occurred, and was an unmistakeable proof of the value of stimulants in bronchitis. After the first few hours of the second attack, of course the brandy was not given quite so often, and quinine was given as well; but at first so extreme was the collapse, I relied exclusively on the brandy.
3rd.—A child a year and a half old; double bronchitis; dusky lips; pulse about 130; cough severe. The usual treatment ordered. Next day better, but not so much better as I should have wished; had had a quarter of a grain of quinine for a dose every two hours; doubled the dose of quinine. The next day there was a very marked improvement, which continued uninterruptedly. Discharged quite well on the 11th day from being first seen.
It is useless to multiply cases, as they are all so similar and so uniform in the result, that it would only weary the reader. In those cases where only one lung is affected, the recovery is more rapid. For example, I was yesterday called to a child about ten months old, suffering from bronchitis of the left lung; there was crepitation over the whole of the lung behind, at the flank and in front. Ordered the usual treat-
In older children it is not necessary to be so prompt in the use of stimuli; generally the quinine or cinchonine mixture will suffice, and occasionally an emetic of ipecacuanha, may be useful to clear away phlegm, but it should never be given in repeated doses. The ipecacuanha wine, which is so much given to children, kills hundreds.
Adults require a somewhat different treatment. If the disease is uncomplicated, and the result of cold, a few leeches, say half-a-dozen, applied to the affected side, will if the patient be tolerably strong, give very marked relief to the tightness and difficulty of breathing of the earliest stage. This must be followed by assiduous fomentations or linseed poultices, when the bleeding has ceased. Internally in robust persons, seen early, small doses, say the J of a grain of tartar emetic given every three hours, for about twenty-four hours, will relieve cough and promote expectoration. It is not necessary to continue the tartar emetic long. Afterwards, for a day or two, small doses of ipecacuanha may be given. If the lungs do not show signs of speedy recovery, a blister should then be applied, and a vegetable bitter, as gentian or cascarilla combined with nitric acid, and a little paregoric given. During the whole course of the disease, beef tea, arrowroot, and milk, may be freely administered, and if the rest is disturbed by the cough, a dose of Dover's powder at bed-time is very useful. In the latter stages of the complaint, bottled stout, bitter ale, or wine, aid recovery. Throughout the room should be kept cool but not cold, and thoroughly well ventilated. Much relief may be afforded in the early stages by inhaling the steam of warm water, which may be medicated if thought fit. Treated thus, few cases will become chronic.
Chronic bronchitis is a difficult disease to cure, especially when it has existed for a long time, or occurred repeatedly. If the patient can remove to a warmer climate, or possesses all the means and appliances of wealth, he has of course a much better chance than the man who has to work for his daily bread, and must live near his work. The first thing to be done, if the patient cannot have change of air, is to make the air he does breathe as pure as possible. Above all the bed room should be well ventilated. The fire-place should always be open, and the door or the window open too. Now the English have such a firmly fixed idea that fresh air gives them colds, and that it is better and more wholesome to breathe a foul hot air than a pure cold one, that this first step is often attended with considerable difficulty. It has cost me more speeches than any other point of treatment.
Next, all things that have tended to produce or keep up the attacks of bronchitis should be avoided, such as going suddenly from a very hot room, into draughts, or into the cold air, wet feet or garments, or getting drunk (a very common cause of chronic bronchitis). Flannel should be worn next the skin, and the flannel as well as the skin regularly and frequently cleansed. Cold water to the chest is an excellent thing, when followed by a brisk rub with a rough towel. It is a pity the working classes, generally, neglect the use of cold water so much.
The food should be simple and easily digestible, and the bowels kept in good order.
For medicine, a whole host of remedies have been recommended and tried, expectorants without end. It would be useless to give a list of all the drugs that have been administered. The principles of treatment are to allay cough which is often most harassing; to help the removal of the mucus which clogs up the air passages, and by local and general measures to give tone to, and restore to a healthy state the diseased mucous membrane. As, however, the patient when he applies for relief is often, indeed generally, suffering from some complication, such as emphysema, dilated bronchial tubesor heart disease: it is often beyond our power to do more than palliate, perfect restoration to health being impossible.
For allaying the cough, frictions with stimulating liniments such as the Croton oil liniment, the tartar emetic ointment, or the compound camphor liniment, will be found extremely useful. They really tend to cure the disease by their derivative action. In severe cases blisters are required, and will frequently do much good. Internally, morphia, opium, or prussic acid, ease the cough best.
As expectorants a number of drugs have been used. I don't believe much in any of them : they are all very uncertain in their operation. The best I have found to be ammoniacum, tolu and styrax, and in very old cases, attended by a very copious expectoration, balsam of copaiba. Squills is much used, and is a very popular remedy. I never saw it do the slightest good, or indeed produce any effect whatever. Ammoniacum is certainly useful. Camphor also seems to do good; but is more especially beneficial when the bronchitis is complicated with asthma, when it may advantageously be combined with stramonium. In these cases iodide of potassium is often of great use. Wheezy old patients find a mixture with camphor, compound spirits of sulphuric ether and laudanum, or paregoric, very useful.
But, I think, more good is to be done by attention to the general health, counter irritation by blisters or liniments to the chest, and tonics combined with carbonate of ammonia, than by special remedies. These latter are no doubt useful; but they should not be used too long to the injury of the appetite and digestion. Inhalations of creasote, or of iodine, in the steam of hot water, I have found very serviceable in old standing cases.
It must not be forgotten that when there is a great secretion of mucus, there must be and will be cough, and it would be dangerous to attempt to stop it. It is when a cough is harassing and continues either after the mucus has been expectorated, or comes on without any spitting at all, that it may be checked by anodynes or sedatives. I have not space to describe the many varieties and complications of bronchitis, such as gouty and rheumatic bronchitis, bronchitis in Bright's disease of the kidneys, plastic bronchitis, a curious and rare disease in which the patient brings up casts of the bronchial tubes, hay asthma, the various forms of mechanical bronchitis and many others.
A few lines must be devoted to epidemic bronchitis or influenza. This is, in its onset, in no way to be distinguished from an ordinary
Hooping cough is a disease too well known, and with symptoms too marked to require description. It commences with the symptoms of a common catarrh, but these in all but the mildest cases are in a week or two lost in the severe paroxysmal cough which gives its name to the disease. I looping cough is undoubtedly a disease or the nervous system, and is epidemic. It may be very slight, or it may be so severe as to cause death.
A vast number of remedies have been proposed for it, but it is pretty well established that no known method of cure exists. The disease will run its course, and the only thing to be done is to palliate the symptoms. Emetics of antimony or ipecacuanha are frequently of service; frictions to the chest by the compound camphor or other stimulating liniments and sedatives, such as belladonna, conium, opium, or hydrocyanic acid. The latter is particularly useful. At the same time the general health must be attended to, and the bowels kept regular. If possible the patient should have a total change of air. This often acts like magic in the cure of this most obstinate complaint. There is a specific given away at a confectioner's in St Paul's Churchyard, which has obtained great notoriety in London, as a cure. I have seen a single dose cure the complaint, and I have also seen it given without the slightest effect It is quite tasteless, and produces an emetic effect. Nitric acid in very large doses has been vaunted as a specific, I have given it without benefit, and I think the enormous doses recommended must be dangerous, especially to the teeth.
One of the diseases in which cough is an invariable symptom is pneumonia or true inflammation of the lungs. Pneumonia differs from bronchitis in this respect—in the latter only the air passages (bronchi) are inflamed; in pneumonia the parenchyma or substance of the lung is inflamed; in bronchitis the product of the inflammation is mucus, which is poured out into the bronchi; in pneumonia, in addition to mucus, there is an actual filling up of the minute air cells by solid deposit—the result of plastic exudation from the blood vessels. In bronchitis the lung will float in water, in pneumonia, at least after the very earliest stage has passed, it will not float in water, but becomes a solid carnified mass.
The causes of pneumonia may be various: cold is perhaps the most frequent, especially if the person is already the subject of tubercle. But pneumonia occurs in the course of many diseases, such as fevers. The chief symptoms are, shivering followed by fever, sometimes headache, pain in the side affected, difficulty of breathing, greatly quickened respiration, cough not very severe, accompanied by the expectoration of tough mucus, which after the first day or two is tinged with blood, and is hence described as rusty coloured. Often, indeed most frequently, there is more or less inflammation of that part of the pleura situated over the inflamed portion of lung. Pneumonia generally attacks first, the lower parts of the lung, and spreads upwards. It may however attack the upper parts first, or it may be confined to isolated portions of the lung.
There have been great disputes in the profession as to the treatment of pneumonia. One party is for bleeding, or at least cupping, followed by tartarized antimony, mercury, purgatives and salines, low diet, blisters and the whole apparatus of the antiphlogistic treatment. Another party, at the head of which was the late Dr. Todd, Physician to King's College Hospital, is for giving brandy in every case. A third party exists in Germany which gives nothing at all, but trusts to the vis medicatrix naturæ.
The real fact is that none of these extreme parties are right. Pneumonia must be treated entirely according to the symptoms manifested in the particular case, and the constitution of the patient. I have never lost a case of pneumonia, and my only principles have been to he guided entirely by the state of the patient, and never to give mercury. I have had a case of double pneumonia occurring in a robust countryman in which I bled to two pints, and am sorry I did not bleed more,
If I were in practice in a rural district among well-fed fanners, I should probably have to bleed frequently; in towns the stimulating plan is more usually required. In many cases great relief to the pain, cough, and breathing, may be given by the application of a few leeches, say half-a-dozen, to the affected side, followed by fomentations. The loss of blood is so slight as to do no permanent injury, and the ease given is well worth the loss, and is not so quickly obtainable in any other way. Whether leeches are used or not, fomentations, made more stimulating by For the best method of applying fomentations, leeches, poultices, and such like, sec the author's little work entitled "The Domestic Management of the Sick Room," London, Snow, price 1s.
Now, if the treatment of the pneumonia has been simple, and if the strength of the patient has not been reduced by violent lowering remedies, the favourable turn in the disease will take place very speedily—more speedily than the practitioners of the old school would readily believe. The following case is an instance,—certainly it is the quickest I ever saw. I was called on Saturday, April 10th, to a stout, healthy-looking young man who was complaining of pain in the right side, with cough, spitting of rusty coloured mucus, feverishness, &c. On examining the lung the signs of pneumonia were particularly well marked. He had been ill a day or two. I ordered six leeches to the side, followed by fomentations, and gave him a saline mixture with a small dose of antimony. The next day the pain in the right side was relieved, but the fever was very high, and during the night the left side had been attacked with sharp pain. On examining the left side I found evidences of pleurisy with some effusion of fluid. Two-thirds of the right lung were solid. Ordered leeches to the left side. The next day he was
In another case a young man who was attacked on the 4th of August, and seen first by me on the 5th, was convalescent on the 12th, having during that time gone through a violent and severe attack of pneumonia. On one day the breathing reached as high as 55 per minute—the healthy number being about 20. In this case, as the youth was delicate, no leeches were used.
Of course, cases occur frequently, especially in large towns, and among a low half-starved class of the population, in which it is necessary to administer wine and beef tea freely, almost from the first. This is also needful when the patient is consumptive, or affected with disease of the kidneys.
When the patient is recovering the diet should be generous and nourishing. Stout, or good ale may be given with advantage, and quinine or some of the vegetable bitters, perhaps in combination with iron, if the patient be pale and anæmic.
I believe that the lengthened and dangerous cases of pneumonia we frequently hear of, are more owing to the pernicious practice of giving mercury, and large doses of antimony, than to anything in the disease itself. Mercury lowers the vital powers, injures the constitution, and retards the recovery more than any other medicine which has been used in this complaint, while at the same time it exercises no influence whatever for good on the inflammation.
Of all diseases causing cough, perhaps the most common with the exception of bronchitis, is pleurisy. It is exceedingly rare to find on examining the body of any adult person, that there are no adhesions between the pleura covering the lungs, and the pleura lining the chest. And even among children who have passed the age of eight or ten years such adhesions, which always indicate former inflammation, are very common.
The pleura is a smooth shining membrane which lines the inside of the chest, and is reflected over the lungs. In the healthy state the lung pleura is entirely unconnected with the chest pleura, except at the root of the lung; but when the pleura is inflamed the membrane is roughened by the effusion of plastic lymph, and fluid is poured out. If this fluid is small in quantity, and the inflammation is not extensive, it is soon absorbed, but nearly always adhesions of fibrous membrane are formed between the inflamed portion of pleura and the lung, or side of the chest, opposite to it.
The symptoms of the majority of cases of pleurisy are very slight. Indeed very few of the persons who are found after death to have suffered from the disease, have ever been aware of its existence during life. A stitch in the side, and a short dry cough, are hardly noticed when they occur, and are very rarely treated by medical men. Once I had an opportunity of observing a case of this slight kind. A young friend and pupil of mine complained one day of pain and aching much increased by a forcible inspiration at the top of one lung. I examined the place with the stethoscope, and found the dry, rough, nibbing sound which indicates pleurisy, together with a slight degree of that peculiar modification of the vocal resonance called ægophony. Two or three leeches were ordered, and in a few hours the pain and the other symptoms ceased.
Pleurisy, as has been before mentioned, generally accompanies pneumonia. When this is the case the same treatment is used for both in the early stages, but if, as sometimes happens, the fluid effused is not absorbed very readily, a blister may be applied, and a little iodide of potassium, or tincture of iodine given, and it soon disappears.
An acute attack of pleurisy, involving a considerable surface, is not likely to be overlooked. The attack is generally ushered in with shivering, followed by flushes of heat, thirst, loss of appetite, quick hard pulse, hot skin, and the other symptoms of sympathetic fever. At the same time there is sharp cutting pain in the side, generally under one nipple,
In pleurisy on the left side, when the chest has become full of fluid, the heart is pushed quite over, and may be felt beating on the right side.
Chronic pleurisy may either be the result of an acute attack neglected or badly treated, or may be a disease of itself. In either case it presents much the same features as the acute attack, but modified in severity. There may be one side of the chest filled with fluid, water on the chest as it is commonly called; but the breathing is not so hurried, because the chest has had time to adapt itself to the pressure of the fluid. After a time however, and in all cases of pleurisy from perforation in consumption the effused fluid becomes purulent, or in other words a vast collection of matter is formed in the chest. Then the symptoms of hectic fever arise, and unless relief is afforded by tapping the chest, death soon occurs.
The treatment of a case of uncomplicated pleurisy in a moderately healthy person, is extremely simple. In no disease with which I am acquainted is so much relief afforded by local blood-letting. Even in weakly persons a few leeches can do no harm, and they almost immediately relieve the pain and difficulty of breathing. In robust healthy persons the number of leeches may be increased, or a few ounces of blood taken by cupping. The patient should be kept strictly at rest, and no talking or exertion of any kind allowed. The chest should be kept constantly fomented or poulticed, and if the pulse is hard and quick, small doses of antimony or aconite should be given. The bowels should be regulated; the diet of a non-stimulating but sufficiently nourishing kind—anything like starvation being carefully avoided, and a dose of Dover's powder given at night. Under this treatment a few days or even a few hours will see the end of all acute symptoms. Should there be, on auscultation, signs of fluid remaining, a mister should be applied, and repeated if needful, and from three to five grains of iodide of potassium, given in infusion of gentian or calumba, three times a day.
I have never seen this kind of treatment fail in uncomplicated cases. When pleurisy arises as it often does, during an attack of acute rheumatism, it is more difficult to manage. Generally the pericardium is inflamed at the same time, and there is fluid surrounding the heart, and greatly impeding its action. I have seen cases in which both pleural cavities were half filled with fluid, and the pericardium enormously distended too. Yet recovery will take place. The first thing
Chronic pleurisy must be treated chiefly by the administration of iodine, and tonics, together with other measures calculated to improve the general health, if the patient is weak, as is usually the case, iron, especially the syrup of the iodide in full doses, quinine or cinchonine, and cod liver oil, may be found beneficial. But the main reliance must be on iodine and blisters. The following mixture I have seen very useful:—
Take a sixth part three times a day.
Blisters may be applied one after another as fast as they heal. Four or five, combined with other remedies, will be sufficient for the severest cases of chronic pleurisy, provided the fluid has not become purulent. If this should be the ease, tapping the chest is the only remedy. In slight cases of chronic pleurisy, one blister, followed by painting the chest with strong iodine paint, will answer as well as several blisters.
I have never found it needful to give mercury in these cases, and though I have seen it given in hospital practice, I never saw any good result from it.
Neglect of these cases, in which there has been a great quantity of fluid poured forth, often causes great deformity of the chest, when the fluid is absorbed. For, after a time, although medicine or the natural powers of the system may cause absorption of the fluid, yet the lung is so bound down by adhesions that it cannot expand, and the pressure of the atmosphere causes contraction of the chest.
Although in these, as in all cases, the chief care should be directed to the removal of the essential disease, yet as cough is often very severe and exceedingly painful, it will be necessary to treat it separately. Now for the relief of this symptom, nothing is more efficacious than Dover's powder in doses of ten to fifteen grains. Given at night, one of these powders will often ensure a tolerable night's rest, when without an opiate there would be nothing but incessant coughing. The sedative solution of opium in doses of twenty minims, and the solution of morphia in the same dose, may also be used, if Dover's powder causes sickness, as it sometimes does.
Of all diseases in which cough is a symptom, there is none so fatal to the English as consumption. And, until within the last fifteen years there was no disease of which the cure was deemed so hopeless. It was formerly considered that to pronounce a person consumptive was equivalent to a sentence of death, for that if tubercle were once formed in the lungs it could never be absorbed or removed, and must necessarily prove fatal in the end.
But an improved pathology, and improved methods of treatment have changed all that. We now know that even in the last stages of consumption, when the lung is eaten into cavities, and the patient is emaciated almost to a skeleton, not only may amendment take place, but even recovery and restoration to a state of comparative health, and that in the earlier stages, recovery is as frequent as in any other chronic disease, provided proper means are adopted.
The symptoms of consumption are, unfortunately, almost too well known to require description. The most prominent are,—cough, slight at first, so slight as often not to attract the patient's attention, weakness, shown by inability to follow the usual employment, or endure even the most moderate exertion without fatigue, expectoration, of at first a light frothy mucus, sometimes streaked with blood, afterwards of denser and darker coloured mucus, lastly, of pus and mucus mixed, with occasional attacks of blood spitting or hœmoptysis, pains in the chest, attacks of inflammation of the bronchi, or air passages, of the lung itself, or of the pleura, and emaciation of the body progressively increasing until the patient at last becomes apparently a mere bag of bones, just covered with skin. During the later stages of the disease, there is hectic fever marked by flushes of heat and profuse perspirations, the bowels frequently become the seat of tubercle, and there is inflammation and ulceration of them, accompanied by uncontrollable diarrhœa, and at length the patient dies completely worn out.
All these dreadful symptoms are occasioned by the presence of "tubercles" in the lungs, and other parts of the body. Tubercles are bodies of a low form of organization, possessing a tendency to degeneration and ulceration, and exciting around them a low form of inflammation, in the course of which more tubercular matter is deposited. Ultimately, when masses of tubercle are agglomerated, and ulceration has taken place, cavities are formed, varying in size, but often as large as an egg, and sometimes larger.
In the treatment of consumption, it must always be remembered that tubercles are never formed in a healthy body. Whether the disease be hereditary, the patients parent or parents having suffered from tubercular disease, or whether it has arisen spontaneously in the child of healthy parents, it is absolutely impossible that the patient can have been healthy and strong when tubercle first began to be deposited. The most frequent causes of consumption are, impure air, insufficient or unwholesome food, dirt, drunkenness, and other vices tending to weaken the body, prolonged dyspepsia or indigestion, or long continued over-exertion either of mind or body.
It would be of course utterly out of the question to attempt in this little pamphlet, a treatise on consumption. All that can be done is to indicate most briefly and very imperfectly the main points to be observed in the treatment.
First, if it be possible the cause must be removed. Of course, if the patient inherit from his parents a predisposition to the disease, this cannot be removed, but it may be combatted. The means of doing this will be pointed out presently. If the disease arises from the other causes named, they should be removed. In all cases, pure air, good and sufficient food, perfect cleanliness, abstinence from any severe exertion of mind and body, exercise proportioned to the strength of the patient, and a sound state of the digestive organs, are of the first importance.
Of these, pure air is the most essential. No one was ever cured of consumption by being shut up in close hot rooms, loaded with clothes, and excluded from every breath of fresh air, for fear of draughts. It is particularly necessary to enforce this in England, as the English generally have a perfect mania for burying consumptive people alive in such places.
Next, we would place plenty of good wholesome food, with a proper quantity of stimulants. The old plan of putting consumptive patients on a low diet, and using frequent local bleedings with the view of avoiding or curing inflammations, was a most pernicious one, and was no doubt the cause of the frightful mortality of this disease formerly. On the other hand, it is of on use cramming people with food for which they have no appetite or digestion, or giving very large quantities of wine or brandy. Nothing requires more skill or care than the adjustment of the proper supply of nutriment.
Next, cleanliness. The whole body should be rapidly washed once a day, and the back and front of the chest scrubbed with a hard towel till they glow. If the patient is not strong enough to do this himself, somebody should do it for him.
Exercise, proportioned to the strength, but never allowed to become a source of exhaustion,—and freedom from all severe labour are absolutely essential. Without exercise there cannot be a good appetite or a healthy digestion : with too much of it, or with excessive labour of any kind, the patient will take more out of his system than he puts in, his weakness will increase, and the tubercle will increase in proportion.
To obtain these advantages, it is often advisable to give the patient change of air; the sea-coast, especially that of South Devon, and the
The purely medical treatment of consumption consists mainly in the administration of tonics and cod liver oil, and of medicines for the relief of cough, spitting of blood, diarrhœa, or other urgent symptoms.
Tonics are always required, and should if possible be administered from the very onset. Of these the various preparations of peruvian bark, and iron, in some of its many forms, I have found the best. Iodine is also very useful in some cases, and may be advantageously combined with iron in the form of the syrup or the iodide of iron. Quinine or some other preparation of bark should be given freely. The mineral acids, especially the sulphuric, are also useful, and are supposed to prevent or alleviate the very distressing night sweats. I have found the oxyde of zinc more beneficial in this respect.
Cod liver oil is, however, the one medicine on which the most reliance must be placed in the treatment of consumption. It should always at first be combined with tonics, but after the disease has been brought into a quiescent state and the patient is fattening, it may generally be trusted to alone, and should be continued for months after all bad symptoms have vanished. It is disagreeable to taste at first, but this is generally overcome, and patients soon get to take it without any effort To some persons it is most repugnant, and disguise it how we may, they cannot bear it I have never seen one of these persons recover, although they may sometimes temporarily improve under other treatment. It may be taken on water, wine, coffee, milk, and a variety of other fluids. Some people chew a bit of orange or lemon peel before taking it, and another bit afterwards; others put a pinch of salt and pepper to it, and try to imagine they are eating sardines. In general it is best to leave the vehicle in which it is to be taken to the patient's own taste.
When it is absolutely impossible to overcome the patient's repugnance, or when the oil destroys the appetite and injures the digestion, other fatty substances should be taken, such as cream and butter.
But the reader may say what about the cough? How is it to be treated. To this I would reply that unless it is very severe and destroys the patient's rest; the very best treatment for it is—to let it alone. The less taken in the shape of cough mixtures and pills, the better. All the nauseating compounds of antimony, ipecacuanha, squills, et hoc genus omne, should be left aside. They do no good, they never touch the real root of the disease, and they do an immensity of harm by injuring the appetite and digestion. If the cough keeps the patient awake, a sedative draught of morphia, laudanum, or hydrocyanic acid should be given. If there is any bronchitis or local pneumonia or pleurisy, these should be treated of course, and hot fomentations or poultices applied to the affected part. Occasionally a small blister, or the croton oil liniment may be of service, but there should be no succession of blisters applied to weaken the patient. Severe pleuritic pain I have relieved by the application of two or three leeches, after fomentations had been found unavailing, but care should be taken that the leech bites are not allowed to bleed too long.
Diarrhœa must be treated by astringents,—hot fomentations or mustard plasters to the bowels,—opium, and careful regulation of the diet.
Under the plan of treatment thus roughly marked out, I have seen patients recover with surprising and most gratifying rapidity. A few cases will show this better than any argument.
Case 1.—In
Case 2.—I attended in her first confinement, a young married woman, who was the last survivor of a family of six—all the others having died of consumption. I told her that probably suckling would develop the disease, although she was then, as I ascertained, quite free from any tubercular deposit in the lungs. I warned her of the early symptoms, and told her to apply at once. A few months afterwards she came to me, suffering from the usual symptoms. There was distinct evidence of tubercle then. I ordered her to wean the child at once, and commence with tonics and cod liver oil. In a short time she got quite well. This was in
Case 3.—I received a letter for a young woman who was a patient of the Royal Kent Dispensary, to which I was surgeon. I found her in a dirty miserable house, in a wretched street in one of the most unhealthy neighbourhoods of London. She was lying on a bed formed of three chairs. Everything gave indications of the most abject poverty. She was in the third stage of phthisis, there being cavities in both lungs. She was dreadfully weak, and was dropsical in both legs, and in the hands, I believe solely from debility. She was also very dirty. I persuaded her relatives to wash her—rather a difficult matter. I got her an allowance of a little meat from the parish, and put her on the usual treatment, although without any hopes of her recovery. To my surprise she rapidly improved; and two years afterwards when I went to the same house, I saw a stout healthy looking young woman, whom I could scarcely believe to be my former patient.
Case 4.—Miss D., a young lady aged 8, had been suffering for some time from debility, and had been gradually getting thinner, until when I saw her she was extremely emaciated. There was a patch of red in the cheeks; the eye was of that peculiar bright appearance so often seen in this disease. There was a quick pulse, and slight hectic every night, with night sweats. The cough was very severe and distressing, and attended with much spitting. On examination of the chest there were found distinct signs of tubercle in both lungs, but more marked in the right, where there was great dulness down to the nipple, with indications of a cavity, namely, pectoriloquy, &c. This young lady had every advantage as regards diet, fresh air and clothing, but one of her sisters had already gone off in consumption, and she had been
Case 5.—
Case 6.—Mrs. D., aged about 40. Found her lying down on a couch in such a state of exhaustion and debility, that I was not able to make on the first visit a full examination of the lungs. She had persisted in going about until utterly unable to stand any longer. The emaciation was extreme; the pulse about 120; the cough most severe and distressing; in fact there were all the symptoms of the third stage of consumption The stethoscope showed the existence of extensive disease of both lungs, and in one there was a cavity as large as a small apple. As the cough in this case was so severe as to deprive the patient of rest, and by its violence to interfere with her recovery, I was obliged for the first few days to prescribe almost exclusively for it. I gave morphia and hydrocyanic acid, throwing in however a small dose of the inspissated liquor cinchonæ of Battley. After a few days she was so much improved that I was able to give her quinine and iron, and cod liver oil.
The improvement in this case was more rapid than in any other I have treated. I examined the chest at intervals of about a week, and at the end of exactly one month from the time I first saw her, all traces of a cavity had disappeared; the place was filled up and cicatrized, all active disease had ceased, and there was nothing remained but such slight indications of former tubercular deposit, as would hardly have been noticed by any new observer. Her health and strength had improved, pari passu (as indeed is always the case), and about five weeks after I first saw her, she was able to walk from the Newcastle road, Shelton, up to Hanley Market.
The above are a few cases selected with the view of showing how consumption may be cured by a rational plan of treatment. Quack remedies are of no avail; there is no specific for the disease, nor is it
The greatest difficulty medical men experience is in inducing patients to persevere with the oil for a sufficient time, and to take regular exercise. Women especially will not take exercise. I believe that the majority of the female sex would not take an hour's walk every day for a month to save their lives.
"To have a cold," "to catch a cold," are, in England, especially in the winter season (which has been humourously described as being the whole of the year, except three days), such very common expressions that they may hardly seem to require any explanation. Everyone is supposed to know by personal experience what it is to have a cold.
In the south-west of the island every disease is supposed to arise either from a cold, or as they call it a "chill," or a "humour," and in other parts of England a vast number of complaints are attributed to a cold without much regard to accuracy. Sore throats are nearly always regarded as originating in a cold, indeed they are usually looked on as one form of a cold, though in many cases they are epidemic, in many constitutional, and often originate in bad teeth.
But the genuine cold, the real catarrh, as it is called by physicians, is a well marked disease by itself. Who has not known the langour, the aching of the limbs and back, the headache, especially in the forehead, the stuffed up nostrils, thirst, loss of appetite, and general good-for-nothingness that attend a regular cold, caught perhaps from wet feet, from standing in a draught of cold air, from being caught in the rain and wet through, from going into a cold damp church, from walking up and down your bed-room in your night shirt, trying to tranquillize your youngest hope and joy (?), from sticking one's head out of a window in reply to an urgent summons at the night bell, while endeavouring to impress upon an anxious and rather indignant papa, in expectancy, that it is desirable he should give his name and address if he wants you to go to the right place, while he is astonished that you do not recognise him in a pitch dark winter's night. Who has not in the course of their lives caught cold from some one or other of these causes?
What is to be the treatment of the complaint? It is in ordinary cases very simple. Stop at home—in bed if you like it, in a warm room at any rate; drink plenty of hot bland fluids, such as weak tea, thin gruel if you can drink it, thin arrowroot, mutton broth, beef tea—anything weak, watery, and warm, so as to promote perspiration. Take a vapour bath, if you can conveniently, or a hot bath, wrapping yourself well up afterwards. If the bowels are confined, take a mild dose of aperient medicines, if not, let them alone. If the headache is severe, and there is no secretion from the nose, inhale the steam of boiling water, which will afford immediate relief. Pursue this plan for a day or two, and you will soon find yourself better. In very severe cases it may be
If a person who is subject to colds, feels one coming on, it is often an economy of time to go to a well-wanned bed at once, having plenty of clothes on, and a foot warmer in it, and take a stiff glass of the hottest rum and water that you can swallow. The usual result is to produce a copious perspiration, and after a few hours' sleep, the patient may awake quite well.
Putting the feet into hot water, in which a little mustard has been mixed, will often greatly relieve the headache. When the headache is very severe, in addition to inhaling the steam of hot water, wet rags to the forehead may be applied with benefit.
I have tried, personally, the wet sheet so strongly recommended by the hydropathists. The wretchedness I experienced on that occasion no tongue can tell. For two hours I lay the dampest and most miserable of human beings, loaded with bed clothes, but unable to rally or get warm. At last, in despair, I asked for some hot brandy and water, which I sucked through a tube, and after imbibing it felt much more comfortable, and speedily got into a perspiration. But never again will I try the wet sheet!
In the epidemic catarrh called influenza, the symptoms are of the same nature, but much more severe and dangerous. Influenza proves frequently fatal to old people, and to those debilitated by previous disease. It requires from the very first, treatment by tonics and stimulants, care being taken to procure an early evacuation of the bowels, if they are confined. In tolerably healthy persons, influenza is not a dangerous disease, although it is a severe one, and leaves behind it great debility.
Sometimes what is called a severe cold, is really an attack of bronchitis, limited to the larger bronchi. It must, of course, be treated as bronchitis—it is something more than catarrh.
That kind of cold which ends in sore throat has already been treated of.
In conclusion, the writer would make a few general remarks on the subjects of this little work.
It will be observed that the treatment recommended is for the most part very simple—too simple some may think. To this he would reply, that in the first place it is merely a general line of treatment which has been pointed out, which must be modified or completely changed to meet particular cases; in the second place, there has been no greater evil in medicine than the multitude of remedies which have been proposed and adopted for a single disease. A crowd of drugs are given—who is to tell to which of them the recovery is due, if recovery takes place, or which is in fault, if any one, when the result is fatal. The nimia diligentia medici, the fidgetty meddling which can never allow nature to work a cure without interference, has killed more patients than the cholera ever did. A judicious physician will, before he orders a dose of medicine, have done much for his patient—so much indeed, that in many acute inflammatory diseases, the malady would get well of itself. Take a case of a working man—say, a labourer or a miner, attacked by acute pneumonia. He has been accustomed to work exposed to the weather, or to impure air and wet, and to undergo a very great amount of exertion every day, which calls upon the heart and lungs for extra work. The physician sees him, orders him (if possible), a warm bath, which cleanses a skin perhaps very much in want of cleansing, and at least opens its pores, and soothes the nervous system. Then instead of having to go to his work, or even to sit up, he orders him to bed, thereby ensuring him the minimum of muscular exertion, and tranquillizing as much as possible, the action of the heart and lungs. He directs hot fomentations, or perhaps leeches to be applied to the side; tells him not to talk or exert himself in any way. Instead of the coarse and indigestible food to which he has been accustomed, he orders a bland but nutritious fluid diet, which taxes the digestive organs to the smallest degree. In short, he puts the patient in the best condition for getting well. Medicine only comes in as a helper to recovery. We don't pretend to cure pneumonia, or pleurisy, or bronchitis, or consumption; we only give such medicines, and order such a regimen as will assist nature to cure them. Herein lies the difference between the quack and the educated physician. The quack says, "I can cure everything;" the physician says "I can cure nothing."
Not that I would be supposed to infer that the art of the physician is of no value. On the contrary, it is most valuable, and medicine, as an aid to recovery, can do very much. It can ease pain, it can
There are one or two points which the author would wish particularly to impress on his reader's mind. In the first place, in all cases of disease, affecting the respiratory organs, the air of the patient's room should be pure, constantly renewed, and not cold. In this, as in some other respects, the English are very inconsistent. They coddle themselves up with clothes, and sit in hot ill-ventilated rooms, and then go upstairs to a bed-room in which the atmosphere is perhaps several degrees below freezing point, and plunge into a bed or the same temperature; in this awful situation they shiver and shudder for an hour before they can get warm. I speak of persons of the middle class generally. Why don't they have a fire in their bed-rooms, and have the bed warmed? They think it would be effeminate, perhaps, and yet if any one were to ask them to lie in a cold bath (warmer, however than the bed), for an hour on a cold night, they would think the proposition insane. Though persons in robust health may stand this process, those liable to pulmonary complaints, should never venture on it. Warm bed-rooms, well-ventilated, and warm beds should be their motto.
Secondly, all persons, especially those suffering from chronic pulmonary diseases, should cleanse the whole skin once a day. The difficulty of persuading some people to do this is inconceivable. Soap and water! what virtues they possess!
Thirdly, never starve patients. What the French call strict diet (i.e. plenty of water to drink and nothing else), should never be employed in any disease however inflammatory. Don't be frightened by the bugbear "inflammation." Give beet tea or weak broth, and arrowroot at least. When children refuse, as they often do to take any solid food, give them plenty of milk and water to drink. It is impossible to starve out an inflammation.
Fourthly, and lastly, patients suffering from any of the diseases treated of in this pamphlet, should not exert their lungs in talking much. In acute inflammatory diseases of the air passages and lungs, this is most important. Lady readers should take particular notice of these remarks.
Allbut and Daniel, Hanley, Staffordshire.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made of!"In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in them—an inward perennial truth and greatness—as indeed all must have that can very long preserve itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts—a great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen—these brave old Northmen—what meditation has taught all men in all ages, that this world is after all but a show, a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that—the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher, the Shakespeare, the earnest thinker wherever he may be—
Thor is vanished; the whole Norse world is vanished, and and will not return ever again. In like fashion to that pass away the highest things. All things that have been in this world, all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish. We have our sad farewell to give them. (Carlyle "On Heroes," Lect. I.)
Prior at least to the days of Harald Harfàgrà, in the ninth century. P. E. Müller, Sagabib II., 129 et seq. Færoiske Qvædher (Lyngby). Randus, he "Thrymsquidha" is one of the poems of the Norse "Elder Edda," which is so named to distinguish it from the "Younger," or "Prose Edda," a work of much later date. These old Norse Eddas contain the whole mythological system of the Norse folk in the pre-Christian times. The Elder or Poetic Edda, sometimes called also, "Sæmund's Edda," is a compilation of poems of very great antiquity,
The "Thrymsquidha," or the "Home-bringing of the Hammer," is one of these lays : a most ancient song doubt-less—so old indeed, that it is difficult to conjecture within some hundreds of years what its true age may be. This is certain, that more than seven hundred years ago it was taken down from oral recitation, and put on record by Sæmund as being then one of the ancient sacred poems of his race. It is also certain that, a century before Sæmund's time, the "Biarkamal" "Welches vor der Schlacht hei Stiklestad 1030 als ein alter lied gesungen wurde, so dass mann es wenigstens in den Anfang des 9th Jahrhundert zurücksetzen muss. Dietrich Alt. Nord. Leseb. Introd. 21. "hann qvâdh Biarkamal hinn fornu." Heimskringla Saga VII., Saga of Olaf the Saint, chap. 219. "He began to sing the old Biarkamal." Laing's Trans. Heimsk.
From internal evidence, there is every reason to allow, an age equally great—if not greater—to the "Thrymsquidha" as to the "Biarkamal;" and thus we have a thousand years at least as the probable age of this lay. Many northern scholars are, however, of opinion that the "Thrymsquidha" is the oldest of all the Eddaic lays, "älter als die grösseren Zusammenfassungen vom Lehen und Schicksal der Götter in ihrer Verflechtung in das Schicksal der Welt was der Inhalt der Völuspa ist und—deren erstere nicht under das 8th Jahr, herabzusetzen ist." Dietrich Alt. Nord. Leseb. 21.
The "Thrymsquidha" is given here in the Old Norse text, In Old Norse there were two characters to respresnt "th"—one for the soft, and the other for the hard sound of the letter. In the present version the English "dh" stands for the one, and "th" for the other. It may be remarked that this Norse peculiarity distinguishes the present dialect of the Shetland people, who do not pronounce the English "th."
In order to elucidate the text in the best way, the explanatory notes appended are chiefly taken from the Prose Edda, The enumeration of chapters follows the order of Rask's Edition (Snorra Edda ed. Rask Hafn. "at allir menn skyldo kristnaz lâta, ok trûa â einn gudh Krist Marioson." Hakon the Good's Saga, cap. 17.
Next to Odin the mightiest of the gods is Thor. He is called Asa-Thor and Auku-Thor, and is the strongest of gods and men. His realm is named Thrúdváng, and his mansion Bilskirnir, in which are five hundred and forty halls. It is the largest house ever built. Thus it is called in the Grímnis-mál:—
Thor has a car drawn by two goats called Tanngníost and Tanngrisnir. From his driving about in this car he is called Auku-Thor (Charioteer Thor). He likewise possesses three very precious things. The first is a mallet called Mjölner (the mauler), which both the frost and mountain giants know to their cost when they see it hurled against them in the air; and no wonder, for it has split many a skull of their fathers and kindred. The second rare thing he possesses is called Megingjardir (belt of might). When he girds it about him his divine might is doubly augmented; the third, also very precious, being his iron gauntlet, which he is obliged to put on whenever he would lay hold of the handle of his mallet. There is no one so wise as to be able to relate all Thor's marvellous exploits, yet I could tell thee so many myself, that hours would be whiled away ere all that I know had been recounted. (Prose Edda, cap. 21. Mallet's Translation.)
Jörd (Earth) is Odin's daughter and his wife, and with her he had his first-born son, Asa-Thor, who is endowed with strength and valour, and therefore quelleth he everything that hath life, (Ib., Cap. 9.) She is reckoned among the Asynior. (Ib., Cap. 36.)
This formula, which occurs repeatedly throughout the Lay, is a usual Eddaic one. Thus in Brynhildar Quidha (aunrr), 5, 2 :—
oc hon that ordha allz fyrst um quadh.
A similar phrase is common in all northern ballads. Thus in the Færöic "Sjúrdhar Kvædhi" (Brynh. 187):—
Gunnar so til ordha tekur.
Hoyr tú Lokki, ek tàli til tiù.Curiously enough, in the Färoese lays is an exact counterpart of this line:—
There is another god reckoned in the number of the Æsir whom some call the calumniator of the gods, the contriver of all fraud and mischief, and the disgrace of gods and men. His name is Loki or Loptur. He is the son of the giant Farbauti; his mother is Laufey or Nál; his brothers are Byleist and Helblendi. Loki is handsome and well-made, but of a very fickle mood and most cunning disposition. He surpasses all beings in these arts called Cunning and Perfidy. Many a time has he exposed the gods to very great perils, and often extricated them again by his artifices. (Prose Edda, cap. 33.) Loki having exasperated the gods by causing the death of Baldur (P. E., 49), they seized and confined him in a cavern with "a serpent suspended over him in such a manner that the venom should fall on his face, drop by drop; but Siguna his wife stands by him, and receives the drops as they fall in a cup, which she empties as often as it is filled. But while she is doing this, venom falls upon Loki, which makes him howl with horror, and twist his body about so violently that the whole earth shakes; and this produces what men call earthquakes." There will Loki lie till Ragnarök—the twilight of the gods. (Prose Edda, cap. 50.)
Freyja is ranked next to Frigga, wife of Odin. She is wedded to one called Odur, and their daughter, named Hnossa, is so very handsome that whatever is beautiful and precious is called by her name. But Odur left his wife, in order to travel into far countries. Since that time Freyja continually weeps, and her tears are drops of pure gold. She has a great variety of names; for, having gone over many countries in search of her husband, each people gave her a different name. She is thus called Mardöll (Sea-Nymph), Horn, Gefn (The Bountiful Giver), Syr, and also Vanadis. She possesses the necklace Brísíng. (Cap. 35.) Freyja is the most propitious of the goddesses. Her abode in heaven is called Foacutelkváng. To whatever field of battle she rides, she asserts her right to one-half of the slain, the other half belonging to Odin. (Grimnis-mál, 14.) It is from her name that women of birth and fortune are called in our language Freyjor. (Cap. 24.) Hence Old Norse frù, Danish frue, German frau, Dutch vrouw. In part II. of the Prose Edda (The Conversations of Bragi—Bragi-rasdur), in the story of Iduna and her apples, "Loki having borrowed from Freyja her falcon-plumage, flew to Iötun-heima." (Cap. 2.)
Thrym or Hrym. Rime, the old word, now nearly obsolete, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Rime was not then as now, a dead chemical thing, but a living Iötun or Devil; the monstrous Iötun Rime drove home his horses at night, sat "combing their manes," which horses were hail-clouds, or fleet frost-winds. (Carlyle's Hero Worship, Lect. 1,57.) Simrock derives the word from thruma (tonitru), and considers Thrym himself as originally identical with Thor, and one of the older gods, in whose hands the thunder had been before the coming of the Æsir. (Simrock's Edda, 4,39.)
This verse appears to have been an Eddaic formula. We find it also in the Voluspa, v. 46.
This is a formula used in more than one Eddaic poem. See Skirnisför 38. Frà Helga 6,1.
Cf.—Volsunga Saga, cap. 38, str. c. Where the hero in anger breaks a jewel.
Cf.—Sigurdhquidha 49, 1.
Heimball is called also the White God. He is the son of nine virgins who were sisters, and is a very sacred and powerful deity. He is the warder of the gods, and is therefore placed on the borders of heaven, to prevent the giants from forcing their way over the bridge Bifröst. He requires less sleep than a bird, and sees by night, as well as by day, a hundred miles around him. So acute is his ear that no sound escapes him, for he can even hear the grass growing on the earth, and the wool on a sheep's back. (Prose Edda, cap. 27.)
Then the sons of Bör (Odin Vili, Ve) built in the middle of the universe the city called Asgard, where dwell the gods and their kindred, and from that abode work out so many wondrous things, both on the earth and in the heavens above it. There is in that city a place called Hlidskjálf, and when Odin is seated there on his lofty throne, he sees over the whole world, discerns all the actions of men, and comprehends whatever he contem-plates. (Cap. 9.)
The first and eldest of the Æsir is Odin. He governs all things, and although the other gods are powerful, they all serve and obey him as children do their father. Odin is named Alfadir (All-Father), because he is the father of all the gods, and also Valfadir (Choosing Father), because he chooses for his sons all those who fall in combat. For their abode he has prepared Valhalla and Vingoacutelf, where they are called Einherjar (Heroes or Champions). (Cap. 20.) In our language he is called Alfadir; but in the Old Asgard he had twelve names. He liveth from all ages, he governeth all realms, and swayeth all things, great and small. He hath formed heaven and earth, and the air and all things thereunto belonging. And what is more, he hath made man, and given him a soul, which shall live and never perish, though the body shall have mouldered away, or have been burnt to ashes. And all that are righteous shall dwell with him in the place called Gimli or Vingoacutelf; but the wicked shall go to Hel, and thence to Niflhel, which is below, in the ninth world. (Cap. 3.)
Cf.—The First Lay of Helgi (Elder Edda) 5, 2.
Cf.—Frà Helga, 5, 1 (Elder Edda); "gullhyrndar kyr fra grams bui." So in the Saga of Gautrekr and Hrolfr it is related that the Peasant Reimr possessed a precious thing, which he prized more than all else, to wit, a great horned ox, whose horns were inlaid with gold and silver, and between them a silver chain, whereon three gold rings hung. Grimm thinks the gold-horned oxen to have, been sacrificial offerings. (Lieder der Alt. Ed. 29.)
Literally: "drank Sif's man three tuns mead." Thor was Sif's husband, or "man," as the word is still used in Germany and Scotland. The phrase occurs also in the Hymisquidha (15, 3) as a synonym of Thor.
Similarly in the Lay of Hafbur and Signild. (Danish Kæmpeviser, 27.) Aldrig saae jeg djerve öjen paa nogen stolt Jomfrue, dertil saa Ear hun og to hænder, der ere som jern at skue. Cf.—The Second Lay of Helgi, 2, 1.
Cf.—Völundarquidha 15, 3.
The goddess Vöra listens to the oaths that men take, and particularly to the troth plighted between man and woman, and punishes those who Keep not their promises. She is wise and prudent, and so penetrating that nothing remains hidden from her. (Cap. 35.)
The burying of the hammer eight miles deep in the earth, and its recovery, Grimm connects with the old belief, in Germany and the north, that the thunderbolt plunges so far down that it takes seven or nine years to rise again to the surface—"Every year it rises a mile." See "Die Edda," von Karl Simrock (4th Edit., Stuttgard,
In the version of the "Thrymsquidha" into Modern Danish, by Rask (2d Edit., Lond. and Cop.,
(Old Danish Folk-Song).
Grimm's Altdänische Heldenlieder. Heid. This "Volkslied," which manifestly relates the same story as the "Thrymsquidha," is an interesting illustration of the change and development which takes place in oral tradition. It is taken from the "Kæmpe-Viser," first printed in
In his appendix, Grimm points out a remarkable similarity between the same tale and a narrative in the Samsonfagra Saga. (Ibid, 520.)
The Kæmpe Viser (p. 424) contains the first verse of another version of the same song, in which Tord is called Torekal.
t was Tord of Meeresburg who rode o'er the plain away, And there he has lost his hammer of gold—'twas lost for many a day.
It was Tord of Meeresburg—he spake to his brother dear:
The following verses, written in Scotsman newspaper, in the early days of November of that same wonderful year, under the title of "The Franco-German War, from the Northern Mythic Stand-Point." At that date the siege of Paris by the Germans was beginning to drag its slow length along; but in due time the prediction with which the poem concludes was literally fulfilled.
When Thor, in this latest but not last incarnation, went on his journey, he had not only the Hammer, but the Belt and the Gauntlets with him. See Note ante page 29.
Meyiar flugo sumnan Myrkvidh í gognom. Völundrquidlia v. 1.
Thar voro hiá theim alptar-hamir theirra. Ib. prolog. Fiadhr-hamr dundi. Thrymsquidha 9, 1.
See Note ante page 30.
"Thor knit his brows, and grasped the handle of his hammer with such force that the knuckles became white from the strain." Prose Edda, cap. 44.
Concerning Kaiser Friedrieh Barbarossa and his cavern, Mr Carlyle says:—"Nay, German tradition thinks he is not yet dead, hut only sleeping, till the bad world reach its worst, when he will re-appear. He sits within the hill near Salzburg yonder. A peasant once, stumbling into the interior, saw the Kaiser in his stone cavern: Kaiser sat at a marble table, leaning on his elbow, winking, only half asleep; beard had grown through the table, and streamed out on the floor; he looked at the peasant one moment, asked him something about the time it was, then drooped his eyelids again. Not yet time, but it will be soon! He is winking as if to awake—to awake, and set his shield aloft by the Roncalic Fields again, with: Ho, every one that is suffering wrong; or that has strayed guideless, devil-ward, and done wrong, which is far fataller!" Hist. Friedr II., Vol. 1, 65.
Like as the Great Kaiser sits in his hill-cave—according to German tradition—so the Norse folk say that their great chief, Harald Fairhair, sits through the centuries in his sea-cave. Down there, in the depths of the North Sea, sits King Harald, with the mermaid who has enchanted him by her magic arts, and knows not how the time goes by; but he will throw off the magic chains and come back to his Norse folk some day. Heine says about him, in one of his weird lays, how—
Kirkwall: Printed by William Peace.
ccorded a favourable reception on its first appearance in 1861, Peace's Orkney and Shetland Almanac and County Directory has had an increasingly complimentary recognition every new issue, until, finding a place in almost every family, it has come to be regarded as one of the institutions of the County. The return duo by us for favours so exceptional is to endeavour to make the work as complete and perfect as possible. This we aim at accomplishing, and it will be observed that in the present issue the local information has been considerably extended, and a variety of important topics introduced, such as must greatly add to its value and general utility.
Much care has been taken to secure accuracy, and though from the extent and variety of the contents this may not have been altogether attained, yet it is hoped any errors which may have crept in will be found to be few and unimportant. The Publisher, however, will at all times be glad to have such pointed out to him, so as to prevent their repetition in subsequent editions.
Some curious traditions, and other information relating to the county, have been received too late to be of any use in the present issue; but next year selections will be made from these with the view of preserving some interesting scraps of folk-lore.
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Her Majesty Alexandria Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, born
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During the year there will be two Eclipses of the Sun, and two of the Moon:—
A.M/; middle, 11.20 P.M.; ends, 2.13 P.M.A.M.; greatest, 9.8 A.M.; ends, 11.14 A.M.P.M.; middle, 3.51 P.M.; ends, 6.34 P.M.A.M.; greatest, 3.22 A.M.; ends, 5.7 A.M.
China.—The Chinese civil year is lunar, and consists of 12 months of 29 and 30 days alternately. In every three years a thirteenth month is added to accommodate the variations of the solar and lunar years. But this is not entirely effected by such an arrangement, consequently the Chinese have a cycle of 60 years, in which period 22 intercalary months occur. The superstitions of that nation render the almanac of the utmost importance, as it contains a statement of "lucky and unlucky days," in a manner somewhat resembling the impudent impostures of the same kind sold in our own country. The year is divided into 24 periods, corresponding to the position of the sun at its entrance into, and at the middle of each sign of the Zodiac.
Japan.—As in China, the almanac is one of the most important works published in Japan. The year is divided into 12 months, corresponding to the 12 signs of the Zodiac. The months, however, vary in length, and the Mikado, or Religious Emperor, assigns the necessary intercalary days, and the months that have to be added to accommodate the variation of the solar and lunar years. The division of daily time is effected in a curious manner, a peculiar sacredness attaching to the number nine.
Hindu.—In this calendar the luni-solar year is employed for the regulation of festivals and domestic arrangements. The year commences at the instant of the conjunction of the sun and moon in the sidereal month Chaitra. The month consists of 30 Tithis or lunar days, and is divided into two equal parts of 15 Tithis each, corresponding with the increase and decrease of the moon in regard to its brightness; but in different parts of India variations of this method occur, to make up deficiencies, &c., that arise in the annual, or succesive annual calendar in regard to the intercalary days.
Poor Rates, payable by electors qualified by the Reform Act of 1868, must be paid on or before the 20th June, otherwise the names of such persons cannot be entered on the Register of Voters.
The lives of persons of either sex between the ages of sixteen and twenty may now be insured for not less than £20 nor more than £100. The sums charged for deferred annuities, or deferred monthly allowances, vary with the age, sex, &c.
Payable in money become due immediately after the striking of the Fiars' prices each year; and those payable in kind must be settled between Candlemas and Martinmas for the preceding crop.
The Burgh of Kirkwall Licensing Courts are held on the 2nd Tuesday of April and the 3rd Tuesday of October.—The County of Orkney Licensing Courts are held on the 3rd Tuesday of April and the last Tuesday of October.
The following Table, the result of many years' careful observation, will be found useful in ascertaining the probable Weather which may follow the various changes of the Moon:—
January—1st to 5th, frosty if wind from N., sleet and snow if wind from S. or S.W.; 6th to 13th, fair; 14th to 21st, frosty; 22d to 28th, fair weather.
February—1st to 4th, sleet if wind N., if East wind snow; 5th to 20th, gales of wind; 21st to 27th, high winds and snow.
March—1st to 6th, fresh unless wind from S.; 7th to 14th, high winds and snow; 15th to 21st, dry and frosty; 22d to 28th, sleet.
April—1st to 4th, high winds and snow; 5th to 12th, sleet if wind from N., and snow if wind from E.; 13th to 20th, wind and snow; 21st to 26th, frosty.
May—1st to 4th, very wet; 5th to 19th, rain; 20th to 26th, changeable.
June—1st to 3d, high winds and rain; 4th to 17th changeable; 18th to 24th, fair if wind N.W., but wet if wind S. or S.W.
July—1st to 2nd, mild and fair-3d to 10th, rain and high winds; 11th to 16th, fair if wind N.W., but wet if wind S. or S.W.; 17th to 24th, rainy.
August—1st, changeable; 2d to 8th, very wet; 9th to 15th, wet; 16th to 23d, mild and fair; 24th to 31st, wet and cold.
September—1st to 6th, fair if N.W. wind, wet if S. or S.W. wind; 7th to 13th, changeable; 14th to 21st, fair and mild; 22d to 29th, changeable.
October—1st to 6th, wet; 7th to 13th, rain and high winds: 14th to 21st, rainy; 22d to 28th, frosty unless wind from S.
November—1st to 4th, changeable; 5th to 11th, dry and frosty; 12th to 20th, high winds and snow; 21st to 27th changeable.
December—1st to 4th, wet; 5th to 19th, frosty if wind N., sleet if wind S.; 20th to end of month, fair weather.
In endeavouring to foretell weather, the general peculiarity should always be remembered, that the barometic column usually stands higher with easterly than it does with westerly winds; and with winds from the polar regions higher than with those from the direction of the equator. Hence the highest columns are observed with north-east winds in northern latitudes, and with south-east in the southern hemisphere. In middle latitudes there is an average difference (unreduced or observed height as read off) of about half an inch, other things being similar, between the heights of the mercury with north-easterly or with south-westerly winds. The more gradually the column moves the more settled in character will the weather be, and conversely.
A rapid rise indicates unsettled weather. A gradual rise indicates settled weather.
A rise with dry air and cold increasing in summer, indicates wind from northward; and, if rain has fallen, better weather is to be expected.
A rise with moist air and a low temperature, indicates wind and rain from northward.
A rise with southerly wind, indicates fine weather.
With dry air and a seasonable temperature, indicates a continuance of fine weather.
A rapid fall, indicates stormy weather.
A rapid fall with westerly wind, indicates stormy weather from northward.
A fall with a northerly wind, indicates storm, with rain and hail in summer and snow in winter.
A fall with increased moisture in the air and the heat increasing, indicates wind and rain from southward.
A fall with dry air and cold increasing in winter, indicates snow.
A fall after very calm and warm weather, indicates rain, with squally weather.
The most dangerous shifts of wind and the heaviest northerly gales happen after the mercury first rises from a very low point.
The tides are affected by atmospheric pressure, so much that a rise of one inch in the barometer will have a corresponding fall of the tides of nine to sixteen inches, or say one foot for each inch.
Take the Girth close behind the shoulders, and multiply it by itself: take the Length from the top of the shoulder to the extremity of the buttocks, which, multiplied by the above, and divided by
To find the Weight from the Table—Look in the column marked Girth for 35, and in the Column marked Length for 34, and then in the next column, in the same line with the length, is 5 stones, 9lbs., being the Imperial Weight.
Note.—The Smithfield Weight may be found by multiplying the Imperial Weight by 11, and dividing by 8.
To find the Weight from, the Table—Look for the length in the left-hand column, on the right of it for the breadth and (mean) height, opposite to which in the next column you will find the weight.
Trench and manure, pre-pare hot-beds for asparagus, cucumbers, mint, potatoes, and the small salads. Sow the brown Dutch, and grand admiral cabbages, curled parsley for transplanting; frame peas, horn carrots, mazagan beans, onions (to be allowed to grow large).
All the ground which is destined for early crops must now be prepared, and hot-beds be multiplied for cucumbers and early melons. Celery may be sown on a moderate hot-bed; also sow cabbages, horn carrots, lettuces, leeks, parsnips, radishes, the scarlet short-top is the best kind to put in now, and a few Bath or green Egyptian cos lettuces, and in fact most of the table vegetables. Those plants, such as cabbages, chives, garlic, shalots, under-ground onions, and horseradish, which are fit, should be transplanted.
In open borders sow asparagus, cabbages, carrots, curled and Hamburgh parsley, Neapolitan kale, pars-nips, onions, &c.; plant out such vegetables as have been already sown. Before sowing, dig carefully, and make the ground level and fine. Main crops may be sown in this month, such as early long-pod beans, peas, celery, turnips, and, indeed, most other vegetables. Mustard, cress, lettuce, spinach, and radishes, may be sown every week or fortnight, for succession. Chives, shalots, garlic, &c., may be planted; plant rhubarb, potatoes, and Jerusalem artichokes. Cuttings or slips of sweet herbs may be planted.
Planting the vegetables which have been sown is now the chief business. Make hot-beds for cucumbers and melons; force kidney beans and Elford rhubarb. Plant out artichokes and potatoes; sow asparagus, beets, cabbages, celery, garden and kidney beans, Dutch turnips, lettuces, peas, radishes, small salading. Cress and mustard may now be sown under a south wall or fence. Clear fruit trees and bushes from suckers, and keep the ground about frequently loosened by the hoe.
Sow carrots, lettuce, capsicums, cauliflowers, spinach, Knight's marrow fat as, &c. Transplant cab-ages, winter greens, lettuces, and celery. Spinach may be sown in a shaded situation, but will soon run to seed. The round-leaved kind is proper to sow now. Spinach is not a profitable summer crop. Hoe and stake peas, water newly planted crops, and propagate aromatic plants by slips and cuttings. Protect from wind and Vain choice tulips, ranunculuses, and anemonies. Propagate herbaceous plants by dividing the roots; wall flowers, sweet Williams, and rockets, by slips; and China roses, hehotropiums, &c., by cuttings.
Sow Cape brocoli, kidney beans, peas, lettuces, radishes, campions, spinach, small salading, &c. The best peas for sowing now are Knight's marrow peas; they will bear till October. Hoe the beds of table vegetables, and pick out the most curled plants of curled parsley, cress, and chervil for seed.
Plant cabbages, savoys, lettuce, celery, &c. Train and regulate the summer shoots both of wall trees and standards; prune vine and fig trees, and shade ripe currants that, are exposed to the full blaze of the sun Take up garlic, onions, and shalots as their leaves begin to decay.
Both cabbages, spinach, Welch onions, turnips, and radishes should now be sown. Parsley which is very thick and crowded may now be cut over close to the ground. Examine bulbs that they are not damp, or they will soon become mouldy. Gather herbs in flower for drying, and articles for pickling. Keep the soil about winter crops regularly loosened.
Sow vegetable seed for a spring crop. Prick out cabbage plants, and gather the ripe seeds. Hoe and clear the ground about turnips. Cabbage for collards in November, and German greens may be planted early in the month.
Sow mazagan beans, and frame peas on a warm southern border. Transplant cabbages, garlic, lettuces, and shalots, under frames.
Force seakale, rhubarb, and asparagus. Transplant suckers taken from the roots of the pear and codlin plum, and prepare them for budding and grafting different fruits upon.
Celery should now be earthed up, and in so careful a manner as not to require the operation again. Force asparagus, rhubarb, and seakale.?
To and from all parts of the United Kingdom, for prepaid letters:—
It will thus be seen that a letter or parcel exceeding the weight of 12 ounces is liable to a postage of 1d. for every ounce or fraction of an ounce, beginning with the first ounce.
No letter or parcel must exceed 18 inches in length, 9 inches in breadth, or 6 inches in depth.
A letter posted unpaid will be charged on delivery with double postage, and a letter posted insufficiently prepaid will be charged double the deficiency.
Concurrently with the reduction of postage on Inland Letters, the Inland Sample Post was abolished.
By the prepayment of a foe of fourpence, any letter, newspaper, or book-packet may be registered to any place in the United Kingdom or the British Colonies. The Post Office will not undertake the safe transmission of valuable enclosures in unregistered letters; and letters found to contain coin will, on delivery, be charged double foe.
The Book-Post rate is One Halfpenny for every 2 ozs, or fraction of 2 ozs.
A Book-Packet may contain not only books, paper, or other substance in ordinary use for writing or printing, whether plain or written or printed upon (to the exclusion of any written letter or communication of the nature of a letter), photographs, when not on glass or in frames containing glass or any like substance, and anything usually appertaining to such articles in the way of binding and mounting, or necessary for their safe transmission by post, but also Circulars when these are wholly or in great part printed, engraved, or litho-graphed.
Every book-packet must be posted either without a cover or in a cover open at both ends, and in such a manner as to admit of the contents being easily withdrawn for examination—otherwise it will be treated as a letter.
Any Book-Packet which may be found to contain a letter or communication of the nature of a letter, not being a Circular-letter or not wholly printed, or any enclosure sealed or in any way closed against inspection, or any other enclosure not allowed by the regulations of the Book-Post, will be treated as a Letter, and charged with double the deficiency of the Letter postage.
A packet posted wholly unpaid will be charged with double the Book-Postage; and if posted partially prepaid, with double the deficiency.
No Book-Packet may exceed 5 lbs. in weight, or 1 foot 6 inches in length, 9 inches in width, and 6 inches in depth.
A postage of one half-penny is charged for the transmission or each news-paper, as defined by the Act. Such newspaper posted for inland circulation must be prepaid by adhesive stamp or stamped wrapper. The prepaid rate for a packet containing two or more registered newspapers is one halfpenny for each newspaper, or, if under 2 ounces, then at the book rate of one half penny for every 2 oz., or fraction of 2oz. No packet of newspapers must exceed 2 feet in length, or 1 foot in width or depth, or 14lb. in weight.
The post cards, which bear a halfpenny impressed stamp, are only available for transmission between places in the United Kingdom. The front (or stamped) side is intended for the address only. On the reverse side any communication, whether of the nature of a letter or otherwise, may be written or printed. Nothing may be attached; if the card be folded, cut, or otherwise altered, it will be charged on delivery as an under-paid letter.
Money Orders are granted in the United Kingdom as follows:—
Above which none are granted, but orders can be multiplied to any amount.
Money Orders granted to South American Post Office Agencies, Australian Colonies (including New Zealand), Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, West Indies, Cape of Good Hope and African Dependencies, British Columbia, British Guiana, Falkland Islands, Honduras, Prince Edward Island, China and Japan, Straits Settlements, as follows:—
By 24 Vic. cap. 14, deposits of one shilling, or of any number of shillings, or of pounds and shillings, will be received from any depositor at the Post-Office Savings Banks, provided the deposits made by such depositor in any year ending the 31st day of December do not exceed £30, and provided the total amount standing in such depositor's name in the books of the Postmaster-General do not exceed £150, exclusive of interest. When the principal and interest together, standing to the credit of any one depositor, amount to the sum of £200, all interest will cease, so long as the some funds continue to amount to the said sum of £200.
The interest is calculated to the 31st December in every year, and is then added to, and becomes part of the principal.
Telegraph Messages are now sent to and from all the principal towns and villages in the United Kingdom at the uniform tariff of One Shilling for Twenty Words.
And so on for every £100 in value.
The Returns issued every year by the Board of Trade as to the Crops and Cattle of the United Kingdom furnish a large amount of information specially interesting to agriculturists. The following Table, compiled from the Returns for
While, as compared with similar returns of former years, several Counties show a considerable falling off as regards the number of cattle, Orkney and Shetland continues steadily to increase. The complete freedom from rinderpest and all disease, hitherto enjoyed by the islands, produced a large demand for stock reared in the County; and fanners, finding a ready market, have of late years devoted more attention to this department of agricultural work than formerly. The value of cattle exported from the County during the past year has been estimated at upwards of £200,000.
Sunderland, N. and S. Pier Heads. (2.) Fixed, visible 14 miles. N. Pier Light, all night; S. Pier Light, half flood to quarter ebb. If the wind is Westerly, the S. Pier Light is put out at High Water. A Fixed Red Light is shown 18 feet lower in the N. lower. The Green Light, a signal denoting danger in the Harbour, will be exhibited from the new Lighthouse, seen over an are of 144 deg. When no Tide Light is shown no Vessel should attempt entering the Harbour, as it is attended with great danger. The Red Light is visible 6 miles, and S. Pier 14 miles.
Souter Point. Revolving Bright flash every half-minute. On same tower a Fixed Light, showing White from S. 11 deg. E.; toward southward to S. 4 deg. W., and showing Red to S. 20 deg W. Fog horn in foggy weather.
Tynemouth, Castle Yard. Revolves every minute; Red flash.
Tyne, or Shields. Two Fixed Bright Lights, bearing in one W. ½ N., now shown all night.
Tynemouth, middle of North Pier. Fixed Red Light. This Light and Tyne-mouth Light in one clears the Stoner outside South Pier.
Tyne, North Pier. Green, White, and Red Light (vertical), on North Pier Works.
Coquet, S.W. part of Island. Fixed, visible 14 miles. Brilliant when seen from the Eastward between S. by W. ½ W. and N. by E. ½ E. A dim light is seen round the remainder of the circle. When seen in the direction of Hauxley Point Buoy it appears Red; and, to avoid the Boulmer Rocks, a Red Light is shown in that direction.—When Tynemouth Light is discontinued, the portion of the Coquet Light which is shaded red to cover the shoal off Hauxley Point, will show bright as far round to the Westward as S. by W. ½ W., and that a second Light will be placed in the lower part of the Tower, showing bright on a bearing from the lighthouse of S.S.E. (being two cables outside the Hauxley Point Buoy, which will be coloured red) to S. ½ E., from which bearing it will show red in to the land to guard the Bondicar Bush Shoal.
Warkworth, N. end of S. Pier. Fixed Red Light, while 10 feet on the Bar, visible 1 mile.
Farn, (2) Highest near S.W. Point of Island; Lowest near its N.W. Point, bearing N. by W. ½ W., and S. by E. ½ E. 187 yards. Highest Revolving every half-minute, Lowest Fixed. High Light open rather less than its own height E. of Low Light, leads between Megstone and Oxscar. These Lights and Megstone in one lead between Ploughseat and Golbstone; visible 15 and 12 miles.
Berwick Pier Head. Two Vertical Fixed Lights in same Tower. Lowest while 10 feet on the Bar; the High Light White, Low one Red. Visible 11 and 8 miles.
Lonostone, on the Rock. Revolves every half-minute, visible 14 miles. The High Inner Light in a lino with the Long-stone, bearing S. W. by W. ¾ W., leads over the Knavestone, which is half a mile outside the Longstone Light.
Eyemouth, Corner of a House. Fixed Red Light.
St Abbs', on the Head. One Bright Flashing Light, on a White Tower, 28 feet high. Fashing every 10 seconds.
Dunbar, Old Harbour and Victoria Harbour. Fixed, lighted from July to October.
Firth of Forth, Isle of May, on the summit of the Isle, N. E. side. Two Fixed Lights, visible 21 and 15 miles; bears N.N.E. ¼ E., S.S.W. ¼ W., 250 yards. When in one they lead about half a mile to the E. of the North Carr Rock. The Lights must on no account be opened to the W.
Bell Rock, a sunk Reef. Revolving Flash every minute, visible 15 miles. White and Red alternately. The base of the Lighthouse is 10 feet below high water. In fog, a Bell is sounded every half-minute.
St Andrew's Pier Head. Fixed Light, visible 6 miles. Ditto Turret in Cathedral wall. Fixed Light, visible 5 miles.
Buddonness, on the Ness; (2) bearing N.N.W. ? W. and S.S.E. ? E. 401 yards. Fixed Lights, visible 10 and 8 miles. When entering the Tay, in consequence of the Abertay Sand having extended S.E., the High Light is to be kept open to Northward of the Low Light, bearing N.W. ¾ N., until Port-on-Craig Lights are in line, bearing N.W. by W. ¾ W.
Dundee Harbour, Middle and Eastern Piers (2), bearing N. W. ¾ W. and S. E. ¾ E. 130 yards. Fixed Red Lights, visible 7 miles. In one they lead clear to the South westward of the Beacon Rock.
Arbroath, on Northern Pier. Fixed Red Light, visible 8 miles, when vessels are about to enter. An Occasional Bright Flash is a warning to keep off.
Montrose, N. side of the entrance (2), bearing N.W. by W. ½ W. and S.E by E. ½ E. 303 yards. Fixed Red Lights, visible 10 and 11 miles. When in one they lead into the river and clear the Annat Bank.
Girdleness, on the Ness; (2) vertical, in same Tower. Fixed, visible 20 and 16 miles. Seen from N.N.E. to S.S.W. ½ W. by Eastward. Fog Steam Whistle sounded at intervals of one minute, the sound to continue about ten seconds each time, and be repeated day and night while the fog lasts.
Aberdeen, on the North Pier Head. Fixed, and visible 8 miles, from half flood till high water.
Aberdeen, half a mile up the Harbour, on South Shore (2), bearing W. ¾ S. and E. ¾ N. 220 yards. Fixed, and visible 3 miles. These Lights are Red when entrance is safe, but Green when Ships cannot enter. When in one W. ¾ S. lead into river's mouth and harbour.
Buchanness. or Boddom Point, on the Ness. Flashes every 5 seconds, visible 16 miles, from N. by E. to S.W. by W. by the Eastward.
Peterhead, S. Harbour, elbow of W. Pier. Fixed, visible 10 miles, from S. ¾ E. round Southerly to S.W. by W. ½ W.
Peterhead, N. Harbour, West Pier. Fixed Red Light, visible 10 miles from N.E. ¼ N. to E. ½ N.
Fraserburgh, Pier Head and Middle Pier (2), bearing S.E. by E. and N.W. by W. 76 yards. Fixed, and visible five miles, except in moonlight, from July to April, and in dark nights in winter. Red Lights.
Kinnaird Head, on the Head. Fixed, visible 15 miles. The Light is Red to Westward of N.W. by W. ½ N. over Rattray Briggs, as far as the land.
Wick, or Pulteneytown, North Pier Head. Fixed Red Light, visible eight miles. When it is unsafe to enter the Harbour three Black Balls are shown on the look-out tower, at the south head, by day, and a Green Light by night.
Noss Head, on the Head. Revolves every half-minute: Bright to Seaward, and Red towards Sinclair Bay. Visible from W.N.W. to S.W. ¼ W. by the Eastward, 20 miles.
Pentland Skerries, on the Island. Two Fixed Lights, bearing N.N.E. and S.S.W. 33 yards, and visible 18 and 16 miles.
Auskerry, Stroneay Firth. Fixed White Light, on south end of the island, visible 16 miles.
Cantick, on the Head. Hoy Island. Revolves every minute, and visible 16 miles.
Hoy Sound. The High Light stands on the N.E. point of Græmsay Island, and the Low Light on the N.W. point, and bearing S.E. ½ E. and N.W. ½ W. 2237 yards. Two Fixed Lights, visible 10 and 7 miles. The High Light is Red when seen from Seaward, but White when between S.S.E. ¼ E. and W.S.W.; it also lights a small are towards Cava in Scapa Flow, between N. ½ W. and N.N. W. ½ W. The Low Light is White, and is visible between E. ½ S. and W. ½ N. round by N. When the Lights are in one they lead between the Rocks of Bow and Kirk; when within half a mile of the shore on this line the High Light disappears below the lore-ground, then haul towards the Sromness shore when the Red Light will re-appear.
Kirkwall Pier Head. Fixed, and visible 9 miles. All night from August to April.
Start Point, Sanday. Fixed Red, and visible 15 miles.
North Ronaldshay. Flashes every 10 seconds, visible 18 miles.
Sumburgh Head. S.W. point of the Shetlands. Fixed, visible 21 miles, from N.E. by E. ¼ E. to N.W. by N. ¼ N. by the S.
Bressay. East side of entrance to Lerwick. Revolves every minute. Red and White alternately. Visible fifteen miles.
Whalsey Skerries. Revolves every minute, visible 18 miles.
North Unst, Muckle Flugga. Fixed, visible 21 miles. Red Light, S.S.E. ½ E. and S.E. by E. ¼ E. In rounding the Scaw of Unst, keep the Bright Light in sight.
Owners and Masters of fishing boats must comply with the following rules:—
purposes of Sale must be registered, lettered, and numbered, as required by the Sea Fisheries Regulations.
Non-compliance with either of those regulations render the Owner and the Muster liable to a penalty not exceeding Twenty Pounds, besides the seizure and detention of the boat.
Deputy Lieutenants for Orkney, David Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie; F. W. T. Burroughs of Rousay and Veira; Samuel Laing of Crook; Charles S. Still of Burgar.
Convener of the County of Orkney, David Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie.
Sheriff-Substitute of Orkney, James Robertson.
Sheriff-Clerk of Orkney, George Petrie.
Sheriff-Clerk Depute, Robert Hourston.
Auditor of Court, George Petrie.
Commissary Clerk of Orkney, George Petrie.
Clerk of Peace for Orkney, George Petrie.
Depute Clerk of Peace for Stromness District, William Ross.
Procurators-Fiscal for Orkney, Alexander Bain; John Macrae.
County Assessor for Orkney, Edward Henderson.
Clerk of Supply and Collector of County Assessments, George Petrie.
The Right Honourable Thomas Dundas, Earl of Zetland.
The Sheriff Depute of Orkney or his Substitute.
The Provost and Bailies of Kirkwall.
The Senior Bailie of Stromness.
Baikie, John, of Soulisquoy, R.N.
Baikie, Robert, of Tankerness, M.D.
Balfour, David, of Balfour and Trenabie.
Barnett, James, Crown Chamberlain.
Brims, James, Writer, Thurso.
Bruce, John A., Writer, Kirkwall.
Brotchie, Robert, of Swannay.
Burroughs, F. W. T., of Rousay and Veira.
Calder, Marcus, Elwickbank.
Dundas, Frederick, of Papdale, M.P.
Fortescue, Archer, of Swanbister.?
Gold, Andrew, Grainbank.
Græme, A. S., of Græmeshall.
Græme, A. M. S., yr. of Græmeshall.
Gray, John, of Roeberry.
Hebden, Robert J., of Eday.
Heddle, John G. M., of Melsetter.
Heddle, P. S., of Gaitnip.
Johnston, James, of Coubister.
Laing, Samuel, of Crook.
Leitch, Simon, Hall of Tankerness.
Mitchell, John, Glasgow.
Pollexfen, James R., of Cairston.
Reid, Samuel, of Braebuster.
Scarth, Robert, of Bin'scarth.
Scott, Thomas D., of Crantit.
Spence, James, of Pow.
Still, Charles S., of Burgar.
Traill, Rev. Dr Samuel, LL.D.
Traill, Thomas, of Holland.
Traill, George, yr. of Holland.
Traill, William, of Woodwick, M.D.
Watt, W. W. G., of Breckness.
David Balfour, Convener.
George Petrie, Clerk.
Auditor of the County Accounts, R. G. W. Irvine, Union Bank, Kirkwall.
Thorns, George Hunter, Sheriff of Caithness, Orkney and Shetland.
Robertson, James, Sheriff-Substitute of Orkney.
Baikie, John, of Soulisquoy, R.N.
Baikie, Robert, of Tankemess, M.D.
Balfour, David, of Balfour and Trenabie.
Banks, William, South Ronaldshay.
Brotchie, Robert, of Swannay.
Burroughs, F. W. T., of Rousay and Veira.
Calder, Marcus, Elwickbank.
Cromarty, James, of Bankburn.
Flett, James L., of Redland.
Fortescue, Archer, of Swanbister.
Fortescue, William, yr. of Swanbister.
Garson, George, surgeon, Stromness.
Gold, Andrew, Grainbank.
Græme, A. M. S., yr. of Græmeshall.
Gray, John, of Roeberry.
Hebden, Robert J., of Eday.
Home, Adam, Carrick, Eday.
Hume, Donald, Hunton, Stronsay.
Johnston, James, of Coubister.
Kirkwall, Viscount. Laing, Samuel, of Crook.
Learmonth, Robert, Houseby, Stronsay.
Leask, Henry, of Swartland.
Logie, James S. S., M.D., Kirkwall.
Mitchell, Edward, of Glaitness.
Mitchell, John, Glasgow.
Miller, James, Aikerness, Evie.
Paul, John, Backaskail, Sanday.
Pollexfen, James R., of Cairston.
Petrie, George, Sheriff-Clerk.
Reid, Samuel, of Braebuster.
Robertson, Alexander, of the Holmes, Stromness.
Scartli, James C., Scar House, Sanday.
Scartli, Robert, of Bin'scarth.
Spence, James, of Pow.
Stanger, John, Stromness.
Still, Charles S., of Burgar.
Thomson, Charles R., North Ronaldsay.
Traill, William, of Woodwick, M.D.
Watt, W. W. G., of Breckness.
Meet at Kirkwall on the 1st Tuesday of March, May, and August, and the last Tuesday of October, annually.
The Sheriff Depute of Orkney or his Substitute.
Baikie, John, of Soulisquoy, R.N.
Balfour, David, of Balfour and Trenabie.
Græme, A. M. S., yr. of Græmeshall.
Leitch, Simon, Hall of Tankerness.
Reid, Samuel, of Braebuster.
Scartli, Robert, of Bin'scarth.
Traill, Thomas, of Holland.
Alexander Bain, Clerk. Rev.
William Spark, Chaplain.
Alexander R. Duguid, M.D., Surgeon.
Fotheringhame R. Bruce, Keeper.
The Sheriff-Substitute of Orkney.
Bain, Alexander, Kirkwall.
Baikie, John, of Soulisquoy, R.N.
Gold. Andrew, Grainbank.
Græme, A. M. S., yr. of Græmeshall.
Reid, Samuel, of Braebuster.
Scarth, Robert, of Bin'scarth.
Traill, Thomas, of Holland.
J. A. Bruce, Clerk. Ralph Fotheringhame, Collector. Edward Henderson, Surveyor.
Baikie, Robert, of Tankerness, M. D.
Balfour, David, of Balfour and Trenabie.
Bruce, John A., Writer, Kirkwall.
Gold. Andrew, Grainbank.
Græme, A. M. S., yr. of Græmeshall.
Reid, Samuel, of Braebuster.
Robertson, James, Sheriff-Substitute.
Scarth, Robert, of Bin'scarth.
Traill, Thomas, of Holland.
George Petrie, Clerk. Alexander Grant, Kirkwall, Superintendent.
Consist of the Commissioners of Supply for the County; Tenants paying £100 of rent and upwards; Four members of the Town Council of Kirkwall; Four members of the Town Council of Stromness; and one member of each Parochial Board of the Mainland District.—Statutory meetings of the Trustees are held on the first Wednesday of April and October.
David Balfour of Balfour, Chairman.
Alexander Bain, Treasurer.
John D. Miller, Surveyor.
William C. Liddle, Clerk and Collector.
Birsay, George Robson.
Deerness, William Mowat.
Eday and Pharay, John R. Colston.
Evie and Rendall, Alexander Robertson.
Firth and Stenness, John Sinclair.
Flotta, James S. Barnett.
Harray, David M. Brass.
Holm and Paplay, William Tait (int.)
Hoy and Græmsay, David Sinclair.
Kirkwall and St Ola, John Watson.
North Ronaldsay, William Fea.
Orphir, William Tait.
Papa Westray, James Keldie.
Rousay, George Scarth.
St Andrews, Archibald Spence (interim).
Sanday, Gilbert Miller.
Sandwick,—
South Ronaldsay and Burray, James Forbes.
Shapinsay, George B. Hepburn.
Stromness, John C. Clarke.
Stronsay, John Forbes.
Walls, Alexander Swanson.
Westray, James Scott.
Birsay, George Brown.
Deerness, William Seatter.
Eday, John R. Colston.
Evie and Rendall, Philip Corner.
Firth and Stenness, John Sinclair.
Flotta, James Hay.
Harray, Malcolm Isbister.
Holm, William Tait.
Hoy and Græmsay, David Sinclair.
Kirkwall and St Ola, Peter Peace.
Orphir, William Tait.
Papa Westray, Edward Thomson.
Rousay, George Scarth.
Sanday (Cross and Burness), James Baikie.
Sanday (Lady), W. Harvey.
Sandwick, John Moar.
Shapinsay, George B. Hepburn.
South Ronaldsay, William Taylor.
St Andrews, Richard Spence.
Stromness,——
Stronsay, John Forbes.
Walls,—
Westray, John Seatter.
Eday, Donald M 'Kay.
Kirkwall, Robt. Brough; Robt. Brough, jun.; Alexander Grant: Thomas Hutcheson; Charles Laughton; Wm. Linklater; John M 'Kay.
North Ronaldsay, Donald Thomson.
Rondall, James Wood.
Sanday, E. Sinclair, Appiehouse.
South Ronaldsay, Magnus Scott, New London.
Stromness, John Begg; John Knight; Thomas Work.
Stronsay, T. Fotheringhame; J. Wallace. Westray, William Scatter.
The Sheriff Ordinary and Small Debt Courts are held at Kirkwall every Thursday, except during the Vacations. The Sheriff Small Debt and Circuit Courts are held at the following places and times, viz.:—At Stromness on the third Tuesday of March, June, and September, and on the first Tuesday of December; at St Margaret's Hope, South Ronaldsay, on second Tuesdays of April, June and September.
W. W. G. Watt of Skail, President.
Francis Taylor, Howe, Secretary.
David Coghill, Commercial Bank, Stromness, Treasurer.
Staff.—Colonel, David Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie; Major, Alexander Bain; Surgeon; Edward Mitchell, L.R.C.E.S.E., F.R.S.S.A.; Assistant-Surgeon, John Bruce, M.B., C.M.; Adjutant, Captain John Yates; Hon. Quarter-Master, William C. Liddle; Sergeant-Major,-; Qnarter-Master-Sergeant,—; Armonrer-Sergt., D. Morgan; Orderly-Room Sergeant,—; Trumpet-Major, William Work.
The Post Offices are open on Sundays from 9 to 10 A.M. Money Order Office and Post Office Savings Bank open daily from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M.
Mails for the South leave Kirkwall every evening (Sunday excepted) at 9 P.M. Box closes at 8.45; and Receiving Pillar, Bridge Street, at 8.30.
The Mail for Shetland leaves Kirkwall by the Aberdeen, Leith, and Clyde Co.'s steamers every Wednesday and Saturday in summer, and every Saturday in winter; returning to Kirkwall on Tuesdays and Fridays in summer, and Tuesday in winter.
Stronsay, Sanday, Eday, and Westray leaves every Saturday and Wednesday morning; and arrives every Monday and Thursday evening.
Holm, Burray, and South Ronaldsay leaves every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday—and during ten weeks of fishing, from 16th July to 16th September, daily—at 7 A.M.; and arrives at 8.30 P.M.
Tankerness and Deerness leaves every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 7 A.M.; and arrives at 6 P.M.
Orphir, leaves daily from 1st April to 30th September, and from 1st October to 30th March, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, at 8 A.M.; and arrives at 4.40 P.M.
Longhope, leaves every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, from 1st April to 30th September, and every Tuesday and Saturday, from 1st October to 31st March, at 8 A.M.; and arrives at 4.40 P.M.
Flotta, leaves every Tuesday and Saturday, at 8 A.M.; and arrives at 4.40 P.M.
Shapinsay, leaves daily, in summer at 5 P.M., and in winter at 3 P.M.; and arrives at 12 noon.
Firth and Stromness, leaves daily at 9 P.M.; and arrives at 3 P.M.
Rendall. Evie, and Rousay, leaves Finstown every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 9 A.M.; and arrives at Finstown at 4 P.M. same day.
Harray, leaves Finstown every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, from 1st October to 31st March, at 7.30 A.M., and arrives at 12.20 P.M. : and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 1st April to 30th September, leaves at 3.15 P.M.; and arrives at Finstown at 8 P.M.
Sandwick and Birsay leaves Stromness every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 12.30 P.M.; and arrives at Stromness following day at 12 noon.
North Ronaldsay, arrives every Wed-nesday at Sanday, and returns the same day.
Adam White, A.M., Hon. Clerk.
James Roy, B.D., Clerk.
James S. Nisbet, Clerk.
Congregational Church—Harray, W. N. Challice (Kirkwall, Alex. Smith A.M., (Rendall, L. Williamson.—Baptist Church.—Burray, Vac. Eday, W. Cleghorn (Westray, G. Macdonald (Reformed Presbyterians—Stromness, Vac.—Evangelical Union—Shapinsay, W. J. Craig.
Andrew Hercus; John Rendall.
Provost, D. Balfour.
Bailies, Samuel Reid, senior bailie; R. G. W. Irvine, junior bailie.
Dean of Guild, John Cursiter.
Treasurer, Andrew Johnston.
Town Clerk, P. S. Heddle.
Councillors, James Williamson, Thomas Robertson, Thomas Peace, William Cowper, And. Gold, Thomas Heddle, and William Hourston.
Clerk, P. S. Heddle.
Procurator-Fiscal, J. A. Bruce.
Balfour, David, of Balfour and Trenabie, Chairman.
Cursiter, John, Kirkwall.
Gold, Andrew, Grainbank.
Græme, A. M. S., yr. of Græmeshall.
Heddle, P. S., Kirkwall.
Heddle, Thomas, Kirkwall.
Robertson, George, Kirkwall.
Reid, Samuel, of Braebuster.
Scarth, Robert, of Bin' scarth.
Traill, Thomas, of Holland.
Walls, James, Kirkwall.
Williamson, James, Kirkwall.
Bain & Macrae, Clerks.
William Sinclair, Harbour Master.
John Muir, Depute Harbour Master.
Alexander Grant, Superintendent.
John M 'Kay, Kirkwall, Officer.
Thomas Work, Stromness, Officer.
William Peace, Publisher.
Offices: Albert street.
James U. Anderson, Publisher.
Office: Victoria street.
Alliance—R. G. W. Irvine, accountant, Union Bank.
Briton Medical—M. Green, auctioneer.
Caledonian—D. Spence, bookseller.
City of Glasgow—J. Cursiter, merchant.
Edinburgh—J. Spence, Com. Bank.
Insurance Co. of Scotland—R. G. W. Irvine, accountant, Union Bank.
N. British and Mercantile—J. Baikie, banker.
Northern—John A. Bruce, solicitor.
Royal—P. S. Heddle, solicitor.
Scottish Equitable—Robert Scarth, Bin'scarth.
Scottish Imperial—W. Cowper, solicitor.
Scottish Provincial—G. Petrie, Sh-Clk.
Scottish Union—J. Spence, Com. Bank.
Scottish Widows' Fund—Andrew Gold, Grainbank.
Standard—Bain & Macrae, solicitors.
Albert street.
James Spence, Agent.
R. M. Hercus, Accountant.
Victoria street.
John Baikie and James Donald, Agents.
Albert street.
Robert Scarth, Agent.
R. G. W. Irvine, Accountant.
Office, Harbour street. Chas. Davidson, Agent.
Main street. Mrs Dunnet, Matron.
John Baikie, Acting Trustee.
Office, Victoria Street. J. Barnett, C.C.
Albert street. Geo. N. Watt, Superin-tendent, Receiver of Wreck, and Collector of Light Dues. Thos. Bowie, Examining Officer. Geo. Drever, Out-Door Officer.
James Adam son, Broad street; Robert Flett, Shore street; William Peace, Albert street.
Albert Street. W. Hourston, Manager.
Inspector for the County of Orkney and Burgh of Kirkwall, J. Liddle, Victoria Street.
Office, Shore street. Robt. Flett, Agent.
Broad street. James Donald, Treasurer.
Harbour street. G. Robertson, Manager.
Office, Albert street. Alexander Bain, Chairman. Peter Peace, Collector and Inspector.
Victoria st. A. M. Garrioch, Postmaster.
John Watson, Palace street.
P. S. Heddle. Office, Albert street.
Albert street. Joseph R. Holmes, Super-intendent. Win. L. Isbister, Clerk in, charge. John Gibson, Junior Clerk.
For Denmark, Germany, and Russia, Jas. C. Scarth, Office, Albert street. For Sweden and Nor tray, Robert Scarth, Office, Albert street.
Baikie, Samuel, Ayre.
Davidson, Charles, Harbour street.
Flett, Robert, Shore street.
Fortescue, Archer, Swanbister, Orphir.
Heddle, T. & J., Shore street.
Hewison, John, Pierowall, Westray.
Reid, Samuel, Albert street.
Robertson, George, Harbour street.
Scarth, James C., Albert street.
Spence, Nicol, Bridge street.
Walls, James, Shore street.
Warren, Thomas, Albert, street.
Williamson & Sons, J., Harbour street.
Robt. Scarth, Pres.
R.G.W. Irvine,Sec.
R. Tulloch, Treas.
J. Ewing, Librn.
The Library is open every Tuesday and Friday from 2.30 to 3.30 P.M.
Annual Subscription, Three Shillings.
President, D. Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie.
Vice Presidents, Provost Bain, Thomas Traill of Holland,
William Traill of Wood wick, M.D.
Secretary, Rev. Wm. Spark.
Treas., Jas. Donald, Eastbank.
Honorary President, Samuel Laing of Crook.
Honorary Members, Rev. Dr Clouston, Sand wick; Daniel Gorrie, London; George Petrie, F.R.S.N.A., Kirkwall; Wm. Scott, Kirkwall; James Tait, Kelso; Arch.
Smith, Glasgow; J. Heddle, Walls; N. Spence, Kirkwall.
President, David Laughton.
Vice-President, Cha. Smith.
Treasurer, James Wilson.
Secretary, Thos. M. Cruickshank.
Place of meeting—Subscription School.
Rev. Wm. Sinclair, Chairman.
P. S. Heddle, Secretary and Treasurer.
President, Geo. N. Watt.
Conductor, George Chisholm.
Secretary, Stewart Hewison.
Treasurer, James Craig.
Committee of Management, J. Petrie, G. Drever, George Milne, Alexander Seatter, Geo. Drever, Wm. Work, with the office bearers.
Place of meeting—Grammar School.
(No. 38 Scotland).
Date of Charter,
R. Scarth, R.W.M. J. A. Bruce. Sec.
Meets in winter every Friday evening, and in summer first Friday of every month, in the Town Hall.
St Magnus Lodge (No. 787 Scotland).
Date of Charter,
G. Drever, W.C.T.
Geo. Drever, Sec.
James Adamson, Lodge Deputy.
Meet in winter every Tuesday, and in summer every Friday, at 8.15 P.M.
Place of meeting—Subscription School.
D. Morgan,
District Deputy for Orkney.
Senior Bailie, John Stanger.
Junior Bailie, Dr G. Garson.
Councillors, George Halcro, John Wylie, J. R. Garriock, Jas. Mowat, Robt. Hay, David Scott, John Rae, Wm. B. Rossie.
Town-Clerk, William Hay.
Garson, George, jr.
Robertson, A., of The Holmes.
Spence, James, of Pow.
Stanger, John, of Ness.
Hay, William, N.P
Ross, William, N.P.
George Halcrow, Chairman.
W. Flett, Coxswain.
J. R. Garriock, Sec.
Begg. John.
Knight, John.
Work, Thomas (police-officer).
John Johnston and Samuel Brown.
D. Coghill, Agent; W. H. Reid, Acct.
William Sabiston, Clerk.
John Beatton and James Spence, Agents.
Lewis White, Clerk.
Wm. Hay, Agent; Jas. A. Garriock, Clk.
President, William Rossie.
George Garson, surgeon.
Supervisor, David Finlayson.
Officers, Thomas Kendrew and A. Duff.
James Mowat.
Brown, John C.
Garriock, James R., Emigration Agent, and Hon. Agent for Shipwrecked Mariners' Society.
Hay, Robert.
Mowat, James.
Rosey, Alexander.
Stanger, John.
Thomson, A., Agent for Mail Steamer and Reaper.
Tullock, John.
John Stanger, Agent.
James H. Dunn, Naturalist, Curator.
William Hay, Secretary and Treasurer.
Scott, D., R.W.M.
Spence, Jas., Secy.
Shearer, W. T., Treasurer.
Hon. President, Rev. James S. Nisbet.
Vice-President, James Spence of Pow.
Conductor, W. Ross-Clouston.
Librarian, Samuel Brown.
Secretary and Treasurer, J. S. Spedding.
Clouston, James.
Hourston, Samuel.
Leslie, William.
Porteous, Peter.
Shearer, John A.
Sinclair, James.
White, Lewis, H.S.
Star of Pomona Lodge (No. 789 Scot.)
J. Johnston, W.C.T. J. Robertson, Sec.
Wm. Peace, Lodge Deputy.
Parochial Board.—Wm. T. Norquay, Chairman; William Taylor, Inspector; Robert R. Wishart, Collector.
District Road Committee.—And. Gold, Kirkwall, Convener; James Cromarty, Treasurer.
Inland Revenue.—W. F. Makinson, Officer.
Agricultural Society.—Wm. Cromarty, Secretary.
Fishery Officer.—D. Harper.
Union Bank of Scotland.—W. T. Norquay, Agent; James Sinclair, Clerk.
Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Society.—John Wallace, Hon. Agent.
South Ronaldsay Total Abstinence Society.—Rev. R. Edgar, President; J. Laughton, Vice-President; John Wallace, Tr.; James Leith, Secy.
South Parish Total Abstinence Society.— William Allan, Burwick, Secretary.
Band of Hope.—Jas. Leith, President; Jas Park, Vice-President; Jas. Sinclair, Treasurer; James J. Guthrie, Secy.
Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society.—James Simison, President; James Flaws, Treasurer; Hugh N. M 'Kenzie, Secretary.
Medical Officers.—Adam Gordon and James Dewar.
Commercial Inn.—Gilbert Laird.
Leith, Stromness & South Isles Shipping Company.—David Rosie, Agent.
South Ronaldsay and Burray Medical Association.—James Leith, Treasurer.
Bichan, William, fishcurer
Brown, John S., baker and grocer
Budge, Thomas, baker and grocer
Gunn, David, shoemaker
Harold & Co., D., fishcurers
Harold, James, shoemaker
Horn, Alexander, grocer
Hourston, Samuel, blacksmith, Widewall
Laughton & Son, J., general merchants
Leith, James, tailor and clothier
M 'Kenzie, Hugh N., watchmaker
Mowat, John, blacksmith, South Parish
Park, James, joiner
Scott, Samuel, blacksmith, Grimness
Simpson, John, general merchant
Sinclair, George, grocer
Sinclair, John, mason
Stewart, Robert, blacksmith, Grimness
Sutherland, Donald, blacksmith
Swannie, P. & W., wood merchants, Cara
Thomson, Jas., general mercht., Quoys
Tomison, M., general merchant
Warren, Thomas, draper
Wallace, John, general merchant
Wallace, Robert, general merchant
Wallace, J. & R., fishcurers and lobstermerchants
Wishart Edward, joiner
Parochial Board.—And. Gold, chairman; George Brown, inspector; Wm. C. Liddle, collector.
Blacksmiths.—'Thomas Stanger, Hill-quoy; George Brown, Breck-by-South; Jas. Gorrie, Longomess; John Stickler, Marwick. Cartwright.—Arch. Harvey, Hunto. Joiners.—Peter Stanger, Sallies; Wm. Gorrie, Midhouse; Wm. Taylor, Grigdor; Robert Johnston, Batkieth; John Folster, Peat gate; Peter Spence, Hundland. Masons.— Andrew Spence, Ouklap; James Kirkness, Glower. Mer-chants.—William Adamson, tailor and clothier, Palace; Wm. Sinclair, Walker-house; Wm. Lennie, New Gelderhouse; Wm. Johnston, Waird; Charlotte Johnston, Batkeith. Shoemakers.—Cæsar Johnston, Gatenip; David Johnston, Gatenip; David Hunter, Hillquoy; T. Spence, Claybraes; Peter Kirkness, Roadside; Jacob Spence, Littlebanks; Thos. Moar, Little-waird; Jacob Brown, Breck-by-South; John Folster, How-quoy; George Moar, Lea; John Moar, Meron; Jas. Kirkness, Glower. Tailors.—John Hercus, Crustem; Robt. Moar, Meron; Peter Folster, South side; David Garson, Fidge. Weavers.—Samuel Adamson, Palace; Peter Harvey, do.; Peter Moar, Marwick.
Agricultural Society.—D. M. Sutherland, chairman; Alexander Kennedy, treasurer; James Laird, secretary.
Trades, &c.—James Banks, merchant; J. & A. Banks, blacksmiths; D. Bruce, shoemaker; James Cumming, joiner; James Duncan, fishcurer; John Guthrie, joiner; James L. Knight, merchant: W. & H. Laird, carpenters; Donald M 'Kay, fishcurer; Alexander Norquoy, shoemaker; William Park, merchant; Alex. Sutherland, merchant.
Total Abstinence Society.—Robert Cormack, president; W. Tulloch, secretary.
Trades, &c.—James Eunson, clothier; John Esson, merchant; Robert Stove, merchant; James Eunson, tailor; Wm. Hourie, shoemaker; Peter Maclellan, tailor; Robert Stove, joiner; Mrs R. Spence, innkeeper.
Parochial Board.—A. Home, Carrick, chairman; John R. Colston, inspector.
Merchants.—John Hourston, Millbank; Hugh Marwick, Calfsound; Peter Cormack, Southend; Ann Benston, Gouth; John Benston, Ferseness.
Parochial Board.—Rev. Alex. Leslie, chairman: W. R. S. Jefferiss, medical officer; Philip Corner, inspector.
Trades, &c.—William Brown, merchant; John Anderson, mason; Wm. Corrigall, joiner; Mrs Hadden, merchant; James Marwick, joiner; William Leask, merchant; J. & G. Miller, joiners, &c.; R. Miller, blacksmith; Mrs Miller, merchant; David Miller, merchant; Wm. Robertson, shoemaker; D. Robertson, tailor; G. Robertson, mason; Jas. Rendall, blacksmith; Hugh Scott, merchant; Wm. Scatter, merchant; Wm. Seatter, shoemaker; Wm. Shurrie, shoemaker; John Spence, merchant; Hugh Trumbland, tailor; James Wood, merchant; John Wood, inn-keeper.
Trades, &c.—John Esson, shoemaker; David Firth, inn-keeper; John Firth, joiner and wheelwright; James Firth, mason; Macolm Firth, mason; John Firth, Buinaquoy, mason; John Flett, merchant? William Flett, joiner and wheelwright; George Garioch, blacksmith; William Gray, merchant; Jas. Hourie, shoemaker: John Linklater, joiner and wheelwright; Jno. Maitland, merchant; Charles Scott, blacksmith; David Isbister, blacksmith; William Waters, shoemaker: William H. Wood, merchant; Thomas Walter, tailor.
Merchants.—James Flett (fishcurer), Bow; Samuel Sutherland, Castle-well; William Taylor, Little bow; James Walls, Hunger-him-in. Blacksmith.— Ed. Nicolson, Hillside. Carpenters and Joiners.—Jas. Barnett, Little pan; John Flett, Bow; Robert M 'Kay. Dam; M. Flett, Blackwall; Thomas Sutherland, Glower-o'er-him. Masons.—Alexander Tomison, Lairdie; Magnus Tomison, Goldha'. Miller.—Chas. Simpson, Hillside. Shoemaker.—Thomas Flett, Carmel's joy. Tailor.—Samuel Simpson. Weaver.—William Work.
Parochial Board.—G. Garson, surgeon, Stromness, medical officer; Malcolm Isbister, inspector; Wm. C. Liddle, collector.
Merchants, &c.—James Corrigall, Mrs M. Cursiter, Thomas Scott, Miss E. Smith, John Spence.
Agricultural Society.—A. M. S. Græme, president; James Heddle, Greenwall, treasurer.
Total Abstinence Society.—Rev. Charles Runciman, president and secretary; James Heddle, Greenwall, treasurer.
Merchants.—William Bews, St Marys; James Laughton, Millhouse; Mrs Sinclair, Upper Breckquoy; Peter Sinclair, Quoys; William Wylie, Moss; Alex, Dunnett, St Marys; James Copland, Roadside Cottage. Blacksmiths.—Peter Pratt, Greenwall; John Ritch, Mill-house; Wm. Laughton, Annfield. Boot and Shoemakers.—Wm. Bews, St Marys; David Laughton, Breck; Jas. Shearer, St Marys; Peter Tait, St Marys. Cart-wright.—George Anderson, St Marys. Carpenters and Joiners.—Jas. Laughton, St Marys; Wm. Sinclair, Scaldagooday; Fishcurers—J. Shearer & Co., St Marys;—Sutherland, St Marys. Inn-keeper.— Andrew M 'Beath, St Marys. Tailors.—Alexander Anderson, Rowland; John Laughton, Millhouse.
Trades, &c.—Peter Folster, joiner; W. Manson, joiner, Rackwick; W. Manson, carpenter, Rackwick; John M 'Kenzie, shepherd; Robert M 'Kenzie, merchant; J. Mowat, merchant; James Moar, miller; Hugh Ritch, merchant, Rackwick; James Sinclair, merchant; Thos. Thomson, merchant, Rackwick; C. Willison, merchant.
Merchants.—A. Miller, B. Mowat, and William Thomson.
Merchants, Tradesmen, &c.—William Kelday, ground officer; Samuel Cutt, carpenter; Peter Cutt, joiner and carpenter; Peter Kelday, shoemaker; Wm. Muir, blacksmith; David Scott, merchant; Magnus Swaney, merchant; Hugh Tulloch, merchant; John Tulloch, blacksmith; Peter Tulloch, joiner.
Trades, &c—Wm. Bews, blacksmith; Magnus Ballentine, mason; Thomas Donaldson, merchant; George Frisken, miller; William Halcrow, joiner; R. Hutcheson, joiner; James Hay, mer-chant; Peter Inkster, mason; John Johnston, blacksmith; C. S. Lennie, merchant; William Manson, merchant; Alexander Nicol, blacksmith; Morrison Snody, tailor: Jas. Stewart, merchant; Adam Wishart, mason.
Trades &c.—William Brough, mason; Thomas Brough, tailor; And. Budge, blacksmith; John Garrioch, jr., cartwright; William Linklater, carpenter; Jas. Linklater, merchant: John Louttit, mason; George Ritchie, merchant; Magnus Williamson, tailor; Jas. Wood, merchant.
Merchants.—Jno. Craigie, jr., Hullion; William Craigie, Cogar; Magnus Flaws, Hammerfield; William Mainland, jr., Banks; John M 'Kinlay, Whistleban, Egilsay; John Smith, Whitelet. Blacksmiths.—Paterson Craigie, Claybank; George Flaws, No. 1; Magnus Kirkness, Quoygrey. Shoe-makers.—Magnus Flaws, Hammerfield; David Marwick, Tow; David Marwick, Viera Lodge; Isaac Marwick, Goodall; William Marwick, Corse; John Lowe, Crowsday; William Lowe, Crowsday. Joiners.—Alex. Gibson, Vacquoy; Wm. Mainland, No. 2.
Merchants.—Oliver Drever & Son, Quivals; Mrs Garroich; Wm. Guthrie, Galilee; Kenneth Hay, Kettletoft; W. Leslie, Nearhouse; John Leslie, Russness; William Muir, Castle Green; W. Muir, Savile; Mrs Peace, Burness; Ann Peace, Silverhall; Robert Scott, Inker-man; Peter Sinclair, North Myre; And. Thomson, Roadside; Robert Yorston, Castlehill. Blacksmiths.—Ben. Drever, Bumess; William Hay, Cott; William Heddle, Stove; Thomas Leslie, Near-house; Wm. Rousay, Burness; Thomas Stevenson, Brough. Masons.—David
Joiners and Carpenters.—James Guthrie, Nutthill; William Leslie, Nearhouse; David Milne, Savile; Thomas Omand, Burness; Thomas Peace, Savile Green; John Scott, Burness; Wm. Tulloch, Viggay. Shoemakers.—John Deerness, Broughstone; William Scott, Broughstone; William Slater, Silverhall; James Towers, Burness; Jas. Wallace, North End. Tailors.—Oliver Drever & Son, Quivals; James Garrioch, Newhouse: David Linay, Ayre; Wm. Peace, Silverhall; Walter Scott, Skailbrae.—Lloyd Davenport Parry, medical officer.
Merchants.—Mrs Garson, Quoyloo; John Harvey, Bea; Miss Heddle, Roadside, Wrango; Mrs Inkster, Aith; Peter Irvine, Bristol, Northdyke; David Linklater, Aith; William M 'Kay, Hestwall; Thomas Merriman, Laye; David Smith, Northdyke; Alexander Smith, Grind. Mr Maitland, from Finstown, also transacts business once a week at Vetquoy. Blacksmiths.—James Harvey, Linklater; Thomas Harvey, Linklater; James Linklater, Voy; James Marwick, Skaill; Thos. Redland, Conyerobreck; William Smith, Northdyke. Joiners, &c.—David Garson, Vetquoy; Jas. Garson, Vetquoy; James Harvey, Linklater; Thomas Harvey, Linklater; Jas. Link-later, Voy; Geo. Marwick (millwright), Yesnacobie; James Marwick, Skaill. Shoemakers.—Wm. Ballantine, Wrango; James Brass, Merribah; Robt, Harvey, Newgarth; Thomas Merriman, Laye; John Spence, Tenston; James Towers, Voy. Tailors.—Hugh Hercus, tailor and clothier, Aith; David Smith, Northdyke.
Agricultural Association.—Secretary, D. B. Hepburn, teacher.
Total Abstinence Society.—Treasurer, M. Williamson, merchant.
Merchants.— William Bews, William Irvine, Henry Jeffrey, William Mitchell, Christina Reid, Jane Russell, Magnus Williamson. Fishcurers.—John Reid, John Sinclair. Trades, &c.—James Donaldson, blacksmith; Jas. Drever, shoemaker; Wm. Laughton, tailor; Thomas Omand, wright and boatbuilder; James Reid, joiner; John Scott, cabinetmaker; Thomas Stevenson, wright and boat-builder; John Tinch, joiner; William Twatt, blacksmith.
Parochial Board.—Rev. Joseph Caskey, chairman; John Forbes, inspector and collector.
Merchants.—Thos. Chalmers, Whitehall Village; Jas. Chalmers, Castlehill James Davie, Station; Henry Fother inghame, Boundatown; John Meil Sampson's Lane; William Melville, S Catherine's; Richard Peace, Holin Bethia Peace, Coungleybank; Elizabeth Peace, Dishes; P. M. Shearer, Feastown; George Stevenson, Ozen. Blacksmiths—David Lennie, Smithy; John D. Reid Clayquoy; Jas. Scott, Whitehall Village Coopers—Peter Miller, Whitehall Village; Charles Brodie, Whitehall Village Innkeeper—Richard Maxwell, Whitehall Village. Joiners and Carpenters—James Chalmers, Castlehill; Robert Scott, Wardhill. Miller—Robert Chalmers, Milltown. Shoemakers—Jas. Caithness, Sunnybank; John Fergus, Midgarth; Wm. Williamson, Station; John Cock, Feastown. Tailor and Clothier—James Shearer, Sunnybank.
Merchants.—Mrs Bews, Lighthouse; Mrs Cromarty; J. Garrioch, Gayers; Mrs Taylor, Peterhouse. Blacksmiths.— William Firth; David Meason. Cart-wrights.—Samuel Petrie, Langskaill; James Tait, Quoyburray. Joiner.— Benjamin Hercus, Lakequoy.
Custom House Officials.—Thomas Wald, P.C.O.; J. D. Garson, O.D.O.; David Beatton, O.D.O.
Parochial Board.—Rev. John Keillor, chairman.
Lighthouse.—William Christian; H. Wallace.
Merchants.—B. Bruce, N. Walls; Jas. Charleston; James Hutcheson; James Learmonth; M. Robertson; Jas. Rossie; Boot and Shoemakers.—James Baikie, N. Walls; Foster Manson, S. Walls; Jas. Taylor, S. Walls. Blacksmiths—Walter Ross; Benjamin Smith. Carpenters and Joiners.—Alexander Manson; David Sutherland. Masons.—Jas. Charleston; Alexander Thomson. Tailors.—Thomas Leslie; William Omand.
Parochial Board.—John Scatter, inspector; James Scott, collector.
Medical Doctor.—E. Eustace.
Officer of Inland Revenue.—W. Jones, Broughton.
Merchants.—Robert Gray, Westside; Jas. Hercus, Swartmill; Jas. S. Logie, Broughton; Jas. Logie & Son, Pierowall; George Mason, Skelwick; Mrs Miller, Rackwick; Charles Reid, Westside; Jas. Rendall, Saltness; Jas. Rendall, Piero-wall; John Rendall, Pierowall; William Robertson, Surigar; John S. Seatter, Rapness: William Smith, Pierowall; David Tulloch, Westside; Warren & Mowat. Baker—Mrs Balfour, Pierowall. Blacksmiths—Matthew Hercus, Rackwick; Wm. M 'Donald, Broughton; Stewart Paterson, Westside; William Rendall, Pierowall; Wm. Reid, Rack-wick. Innkeepers—James Rendall, Pierowall; David Tulloch, Westside. Joiners and Carpenters—George Drever, Broughton: Drever, Rapness; Matthew Hercus, Rackwick; Archibald Logie, Pierowall; George Rendall, Pierowall; David Reid, Brought on; William Reid, Rackwick; Charles Reid, Westside. Masons—John Allan, Broughton; Robt. Gray, Westside; Thomas Pottinger, Dykeside; Samuel Reid, Westside. Shoemakers—John Biglan, Braehead; John Drever, Pigger; Thomas Drever, Rapness; James Garrioch, Broughton; Thomas Hercus, Westside; George Masson, Skelwick; Archibald Reid, Rackwick; John Reid, Braehead; Thos. Reid, Braehead. Tailors—John Burgar, Rapness; James Drever, Cleaton; Thos. Logie, Skelwick; Jas S. Logie, Broughton; James Logie & Son, Pierowall (clothiers); Warren & Mowat, Pierowall (clothiers). Weavers—Stewart Rendall & Sons, Broughton; John Rendall, Rackwick.
Librarian.—James Keldie.
Trades, &c.—James Miller, merchant; Thos. Mainland, joiner and boatbuilder; Andrew Drever,
Sheriff Commissary and Vice-Admiral of Shetland, Sheriff Depute Thorns.
Deputy Lieutenants for Shetland, Robert Bell of Lunna; John Bruce of Sum-burgh.
Joint Conveners for Shetland, Robert Bell of Lunna; John Bruce of Sumburgh.
Sheriff-Substitute of Shetland, Andrew Mure.
Sheriff-Clerk of Shetland, George Smith, S.S.C.
Sheriff-Clerk Depute, John Manson.
Auditor of Court, George Smith, S.S.C.
Commissary Clerk of Shetland, John W. Spence.
Clerk of Peace for Shetland, George Smith, S.S.C.
Procurators-Fiscal for Shetland, Charles Gilbert Duncan; J. Kirkland Galloway.
County Assessor for Shetland, E. Henderson.
Clerk of Supply, George Smith, S.S.C.
Collector of County Assessments, J. Hunter.
The Right Honourable Thomas Dundas, Earl of Zetland.
The Sheriff Depute of Shetland or his Substitute.
Bell, Robert, of Lunna.
Black, D. D., of Kergood.
Bruce, John, of Sumburgh.
Bruce, John, yr. of Sumburgh.
Bruce, Robert, of Symbester.
Cameron, Thomas M., of Garth.
Duncan, C. G., Chief Magistrate of Lerwick.
Dundas, Frederick, of Papdale, M.P.
Edmondstone, Thomas, of Buness.
Garrioch, James, Reawick.
Garrioch, Lewis F. U., Reawick.
Gifford, Thomas, Factor, Busta.
Grierson, Andrew J., of Ouendale.
Hay, Arthur J., Joint-Factor to Lord Zetland.
Hay, George H. B., of Hayfield.
Irvine, William, Lerwick.
Johnson, George, of Tresta.
Leask, Joseph, of Sand.
Ogilvy, Charles, of Gossaburgh.
Robertson, John, Junior Bailie of Ler-wick.
Scott, R. T. C., of Melby.
Umphray, Andrew, of Reawick.
Walker, Miles, of Swinklehouse.
Thos. M. Cameron of Garth, Convr
George Smith, S.S.C., Clerk.
John Gatherer, Collector, Receiver of Wreck, Superintendent Mercantile Marine Office, and Collector of Light Dues. Garden, Examining Officer.
Robert Chisholm, Gilbert Laurenson, and George Robertson, O. D. Officers.
William Sievwright.
John Wm. Spence.
Charles G. Duncan.
J. Kirkland Galloway.
Consul for Belgium, Charles G. Duncan,
Vice-Consul for the Netherlands, Charles G. Duncan.
Vice-Consul for France, George H. B. Hay.
Vice-Consul for Denmark, Arthur J. Hay.
Vice-Consul for Spain, Joseph Leask.
Vice-Consul for Russia, William Irvine.
Vice-Consul for Sweden and Norway, A. Sutherland.
Vice-Consul for Germany, Jas. R. Spence.
Vice-Consul for United States, (vacant).
Lerwick, Dunrossness, Scalloway, Voe, Mossbank, Yell, Uyeasound, Baltasound.
Andrew Umphray.
John Bruce, jr.
Robert Bruce.
Arthur J. Hay.
John Robertson, sen.
Thomas M. Cameron.
Joseph Leask.
George H. B. Hay.
Lewis F. U. Garrioch.
Andrew Mure, Convener.
George Smith, Clerk.
A. R. Saunders, A.M., Chaplain.
R. Cowie, M.D., Surgeon.
Mrs Laurenson, Matron.
Fleming Laurenson, Keeper.
Mrs Laurenson, Matron.
George H. B. Hay.
John Bruce.
Joseph Leask.
Andrew J. Grierson.
George Smith, Clerk.
Edward Henderson, Valuator and Assessor.
Ralph Fotheringhame, Collector.
One Representative from each Parochial Board.
The Commissioners of Supply.
The Justices of the Peace.
Four Members of Lerwick Town Council.
Thomas M. Cameron, Chairman. David Moncurr, Surveyor.
Peter Urquhart, Lerwick, Superintendent.
George Mackay, Lerwick, Surveyor.
Bressay, John Ross.
Bressay (Burra and Quariff District), Robert Christie.
Delting, James Loutitt.
Dunrossness, William Laurence.
Lerwick, C. Sandison.
Mid and South Yell, M. L. Stove.
Nesting (Lunnasting District), John Anderson.
Nesting, J. Hunter.
Nesting (Whalsay District) J. Wishart.
Northmavine, James Bruce.
North Yell and Fetlar, P. M. Sandison.
Sandsting and Aithsting, Alexander Wallace.
Tingwall, C. C. Beatton.
Unst, D. J. White.
Walls and Sandness, James Georgeson.
Bressay, John Ross.
Burra and Quariff, W. E. Morrison.
Delting, Thomas Gilford.
Dunrossness, William Laurence.
Fair Isle, C. Wilson.
Fetlar, James Garrioch.
Lerwick, Charles Merrylees.
Lunnasting, John Anderson.
Nesting, W. Levie.
Northmavine, James Henderson.
Sandsting and Aithsting, Geo. Williamson.
Sandwick, Thomas Mouat.
Ting wall, C. C. Beatton.
Unst, D. J. White.
Walls..Russell.
Whalsay, John Wishart.
Whiteness, L. Henderson.
Yell (North), J. S. Hourston.
Yell (South), A. D. Mathieson.
Abernethy, Mitchell, Sandsting.
Barclay, Andrew, Whalsay.
Jamison, Adam, Conningsburgh.
Johnstone, Thomas, Mid Yell.
Ollason, Andrew, Lerwick.
Pearson, David, Lunnasting.
Robertson. Laurence, Northmavine.
Smith, Francis, Dunrossness.
Smith, John, Aithsting.
Spence, James, North Yell.
Thomson, John, Unst.
Frederick Souter, Clerk.
(Commissioners of Police and Local Authority.)
Anderson, Robert.
Laurenson, Arthur.
Linklater, Robert.
Merrylees, Charles.
Robertson, Charles.
Robertson, John, jr.
Stout, Robert.
Stove, L. G.
Tait, John.
John Manson, Town-Clerk.
George Mackay, Burgh Officer.
Chief Magistrate, Charles G. Duncan.
Junior Bailie, John Robertson, sen.
Procurator-Fiscal, George Mackay.
William Sievwright, Chairman.
C. Sandison, Inspector.
George Mackay, Collector.
Keeper, Peter Urquhart.
Assistant, Andrew Ollason.
Captain, James Hunter.
Lieutenant, John Tait.
Ensign, Charles Merrylees.
Colour-Sergeant, Charles Robertson.
Instructor, Sergeant W. Horspool.
Postmaster of Lerwick, Robert Stout.
Registrar of Lerwick, Charles Merrylees.
Distributor of Stamps, Peter Garrioch.
Officer of Fisheries, J. Kennedy.
Supervisor of Inland Revenue, Charles D. Stewart.
Officer of Inland Revenue, Robert Paxton.
Educational Institute of Lerwick, comprising—I.. Upper School for Boys; II., Upper School for Girls; III., Elementary School: R. Whitford, M.A., Principal.
Parochial School, James Hunter.
St Magnus' Episcopal School, John Gray.
Ladies' School, Miss Merrylees.
Charles G. Duncan, Agent.
Jno. M. Young, Accountant.
William Sievwright, Agent.
Arthur Sandison, Accountant.
Alexander Mitchell, Agent.
James Hunter, Accountant.
Published simultaneously in Kirkwall and Lerwick.
R. S. Brown, Bookseller, Lerwick, Agent. Offices: Albert Street, Kirkwall.
Donald Stephen, Publisher.
Offices: Queen's Lane, Lerwick.
Robertson & Merrylees, Agents.
William Irvine, Agent.
P. Garriock, Agent.
R. Cowie, M.D., Agent.
Constituted
Geo. Smith, R.W.M. R. Goudie, Secy.
Place of Meeting: Masons' Hall, Queen's Lane.
J. S. Angus, Presdt.
R. Stout, Secy.
Place of Meeting: Oddfellows' Hall, Queen's Lane.
Ultima Thule Lodge (No. 577 Scotland)
W.Duncan, W.C.T.
A. K. Williamson.Sec.
Meets every Friday evening in the Oddfellows' Hall, Queen's Lane.
Star of the North Lodge (No. 697 Scotland).
H.Morrison, W.C.T.
W. Robertson,Sec.
Meets every Tuesday evening in the Oddfellows' Hall, Queen's Lane.
Hope of Lerwick (Juvenile) Lodge.
Robert Sinclair, President.
Place of Meeting : Baptist Chapel.
John Slater,
District Deputy for Shetland.
President, Arthur Laurenson.
Vice-President, John Leisk.
Secretary, James Hunter, junior.
Treasurer, Arthur Sandison.
President, T. Edmondston of Buness.
Vice-President, D. Edmondston.
Secretary, D. J. White.
t Noss, a majestic ocean precipice rises up, 600 feet above the sea, the vast nesting-place of innumerable auks and kitti-wake gulls.
Whether ap-proached from the land or the sea, the scene that suddenly bursts upon the sight is truly marvellous, and we fear inde-scribable. The rocky cliff, along its whole extent, is covered with birds, packed to-gether in long parallel rows, like books in a well-stored li-brary. The no-velty of the sight must strike with astonishment all who for the first time behold it. It is difficult to say whether the view from below or above is the more wonderful. Seen from a boat, a wall of birds seems to rise from sea to sky, all built up in regular courses of soft-eyed gentle gulls and stiff stuck-up auks, with fringes of fretted rock-work between; and when a shot is fired there is a rush of wings, and a living cloud in the air, as if bees were swarming from an unmeasured hive. And yet, in spite of the multitudes that take wing, the eye can detect no diminution in the myriads that remain upon the rock. But after each flight a heavy dropping sound is heard on the water all along the base of the cliff, plash, plash, like the first drops of some terrible hail-shower. It is caused by the numbers of eggs which the auks have rolled over in their sudden rise. The guillemot makes no nest, but lays its one large egg upon the bare ledge, and its pear-shaped form alone prevents its being constantly overturned. Looking down from the summit of Noss, the element of terror is added to the wonder of the scene; and the mingled screams of the birds rise up for ever in one great chorus, which seems to swell, and fall, and change as if in sympathy to some unknown tune. Till recently an eagle regularly built upon this rock; but some years ago a labourer from Bressay effected the robbery of its eyrie, bearing off as a prize its two eggs, which are still to be seen in the possession of the gentleman to whom he gave them.
The cradle of Noss, which is now removed, was simply a square box suspended upon two parallel ropes stretched across the gap between the island and the holm, into which the traveller took his seat, and either pulled himself across, or was drawn along by his associates.?
he impressive memorials of antiquity, which impart distinction to the capital of Orkney, can scarcely fail to excite the surprise and awaken the interest of all intelligent travellers. They have probably been attracted to the Islands by perusing the records of the reigns of Norwegian and Scottish Earls, and yet the feeling of astonishment possesses them when they see, in the old cathedral and the ruined palaces, so many indications and remembrancers of former greatness connected with the remote town of Kirkwall. Founded before the middle of the twelfth century, and dedicated to St. Magnus the martyr, the Cathedral is a grand, solemn, and stately pile, venerable with memories of the old Norse renown, and through its gloomy aisles, haunted by sceptred shades, there still seems to sound the mournful tread of Norse warriors who, long ages ago, carried Haco, the fallen flower of Scandinavian chivalry, on his royal bier. This noble old edifice shares the distinction with St Mungo's in Glasgow, of being still entire, with the exception of the tower, which was once partially destroyed by lightning, and has never been restored to its original form. The secluded situation of St. Magnus preserved the building from the iconoclastic ravages of the reformers, and it was also fortunately saved at a later date from the blind and wanton fury of the Earl of Caithness, who after quelling with difficulty an insurrection in Orkney during the reign of King James VI., wished to crown his triumph by demolishing the cathedral church, from the spire of which the insurgents had fired upon his forces.—Summers and Winters in the Orkneys, by Daniel Gorrie.
n one of the last days of wear the ship. About half-past two the breakers came in sight. As the vessel was drifting directly broadside on them, one or two head-sails were set, in order to turn her head towards the rocks, and thus give the crew a better chance of saving their lives. But the sails were "torn to ribbons," and the ship went broadside on to a reef, off East Linga. Two lifeboats were now lowered, but immediately smashed to pieces against the vessel's side. The officers and all the crow went aft, save two men, who took refuge in the fore-rigging. The ship had not lain many minutes on the reef till she broke in two; the after part gradually sunk, and one or two tremendous waves, in the course of two or three minutes, swept the captain and twenty-five of the crew into eternity. Meantime, the fore part of the steamer was carried over the reef, and driven right against the side of the island; whereupon Daniel Coleman and Edward Johnson lowered themselves down with ropes, and got on the dry land. Cold, wet, hungry, bareheaded, barefooted, and clad only in a ragged shirt and trousers were these poor men when they came on shore. To add to their other miseries, they soon discovered they were on a small uninhabited island, without any kind of provisions. They would probably have been blown off their place of banishment by the violence of the hurricane, but for a hut used by the fishermen in summer. In this cold, damp, dilapidated erection they got some shelter from the pitiless storm, and enjoyed occasional snatches of sleep. On Wednesday Johnson hoisted a pair of trousers on an oar placed on the highest point of the island; this signal was observed by the fishermen at Ska, in Whalsay, three miles off, but with such weather they could render no assistance. On Tuesday and Wednesday the only sustenance the survivors obtained was quantities of water they forced themselves to drink from a spring. On Thursday and Friday some grass was added, and on Saturday forenoon the sea, which had been running mountains high round their insular prison, having somewhat abated, they were enabled to approach the shore and pick a few limpets, which they greedily devoured. There were two sheep on the islet, but every effort to catch them failed. Twelve of the brave men of Whalsay manned one of their powerful boats, on Thursday, and attempted to reach East Linga; but the sea drove them back. Another attempt made on Friday also proved futile. On Saturday at noon they effected a landing with great difficulty, and carried the poor starving sufferers in triumph to Whalsay, where the utmost kindness was showered on them.—From "Shetland and its Inhabitants."
here are two classes of icebergs. One consists of consolidated accumulations of ice, which, in frozen regions, fill the valleys between high mountains. The most remarkable icebergs are those on the eastern coast of Spitzbergen, which are seven in number, but at considerable distances one from the other, each filling a valley, and extending to tracts hitherto inaccessible. One of these exhibits a front of three hundred feet in height, and rivals the emerald in colour and brilliancy.
The other class of icebergs to which the term is applied is those irregular masses of ice which, being separated from the main body, float about in the ocean, exhibiting to the eye the representation of churches, houses, and other fantastical appearances. Captain Sir F. Leopold McClintock, in his "Fate of Sir John Franklin," thus writes :—"The icebergs, the chief cause of our unfortunate detention, and which for more than three weeks were in advance of us to the westward, are now, in the short space of two days, nearly out of sight to the eastward." Again he writes :—"Thermometer has fallen to 17 deg. at noon. "We have drifted eighteen miles to the west in the last week, therefore our neighbours, the icebergs, are not always aground, but even when afloat, drift more slowly than the light ice." We can well imagine it is not agreeable to be in such a position as Sir John Franklin was, nor yet as that of Captain Sir F. L. McClintock. They were verily "Among the Icebergs," perilling their lives, attempting to carry out a great discovery for the world they lived in. We will not dwell upon this, but turn our attention to the beautiful icebergs which the jocund traveller delights to witness—not in the cold regions of Spitzbergen and the Arctic, but in the tourists' fond land of Switzerland. These are the creation of ages, receiving additional height by the falling of snows and of rain, which often instantly freezes, and more than repairs the loss occasioned by the influence of the sun. At times, immense fragments break off, and descend the precipitous sides with an alarming velocity.
Frost sports wonderfully with icebergs, and gives them majestic and singular forms. Masses have been seen assuming what an Arabian tale would scarcely dare to relate.
Grindelwald owes its celebrity to the beauty of the passes of the Scheideck, and to its glaciers which, as they descend into the bottom of the valley below the level of the village, are easily accessible. From the sides of the Mettenberg stream out the two glaciers of Grindelwald. They are branches of that field or ocean of ice which occupies the table-land and high valleys of the Bernese Alps, and may be likened to feelers or claws pushed downwards into the habitable world by the grim frost-king above. As a feature of the landscape, their chief beauty arises from contrast, the white ice being fringed by forest and pasture. The lower glacier, sometimes called the smaller, although four times as large as the upper one, forces its way out between the Eiger and Mettenberg, and descends to a point only 3200 ft. above the level of the sea. A path runs along the cliff beneath the precipices of Mettenberg, commanding a view of the minarets of the ice-fall, and affording means, by way of ladder, of paying a visit to the Eismeer (which means ice-sea) or level part of the glacier, which forms one of the pleasantest excursions on the Alps. This excursion is not suited to timid persons, as the path skirts a precipice, and the recent shrinking of the ice renders it necessary to descend by means of a ladder of a hundred steps or more. Ladies, however, do this excursion, for whom every facility is provided.
hose in search of our northern antiquities need not proceed further than the subject of our plate, for it represents the most northerly building in Britain of architectural interest, and certainly it has its own peculiar features. In its plan, Noltland Castle is remarkable; and here we must refer to our plate for explanation.
The central portion is an oblong parallelogram, and its lower story (strongly vaulted with one continuous semicircular arch), was devoted to the Great Hall and Kitchen. To two opposing angles of this main figure other buildings are attached. That on the left contains the great staircase, and the mass to the right appears to consist of dungeons below, and the private apartments of the Baron above.
Detached walls, and the arched gateway delineated, are the remains of additional edifices forming a court-yard; but these do not belong to the original fortress. This fact is evident from their inclosing the external
port-holes, if we may so call them. These are plentiful upon the portions of the Castle represented, but the opposite side is so redundant of them, tier above tier, that we can compare it to nothing but the rows of teeth "in a man of war's battery, and the general hulky appearance almost justifies us in attributing the design to a sailor architect. Whoever he was, tradition reports his remains to be immured within the walls of the staircase, and a huge stone on the exterior is pointed out as his coffin lid.
Massive construction in the basement is, however, well relieved by the fanciful design of the upper floors. Here are windows comparatively large, richly ornamented with mouldings, and the continuation of a stringcourse around the windows as labels is peculiarly effective. Nor must we omit calling attention to the ornamental turns of this string-course at the angles of the building. Much irregularity exists in the masonry, for sometimes the layers of rough stone-work are alternately massive or very thin. In nearly all of the first class the effect is peculiar, from the angular direction of the joints, which should be vertical. This has doubtless arisen from the rhomboidal form of the beds in the stone quarry.
Noltland Castle was begun by Thomas de Tulloch, Bishop of Orkney, and Governor of these isles under Eric of Denmark,
It is the property of David Balfour of Trenabie, the twenty-sixth representative of Siward filz Osulf filz Siward, "cui dat Edgar Rex Scotorum vallem de Or (Balfour in Fifeshire) pro capite Ottari Dani"—and the otter head has since remained the cognizance of the family.—Baronial Antiquities of Scotland.
he Orkney and Shetland islanders were rich in witchcraft superstitions. They had all the Norwegian beliefs in fullest, ripest quality, and held to everything that had been handed down to them from Harald Harfagre and his followers. Kelpies and trows, and brownies and trolls, which somehow or other went out with taxation and agriculture, peopled every stream and every meadow, and witches were as many as there were men who loved nature, or women who had a faculty for healing and the instinct of making pets. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century, a woman was adjudged a witch because she was seen going from Hilswick to Brecon with a couple of familiars in the form of crows or corbies, which hopped on each side of her all the way. Which thing, not being in the honest nature of these fowls to do, she was strangled and burnt. But most frequently the imp took the shape of a cat or dog; sometimes of a respectable human being; as was the case about seventy years ago, when it was notorious that the devil, as a good braw countryman, helped a warlock's wife to delve while her husband was engaged at the haaf. According to the same authority too, not longer ago than this time, when the devil dug like any navvy, a woman of the parish of Dunrossness was known to have a deadly enmity against a boat's crow that had sot off to the haaf. The day was cloudless, but the woman was a witch, and storms were as easy for her to raise as to blow a kiss from the hand. She took a wooden basin, called a cap, and set it afloat in a tub of water; then, as if to disarm suspicion, went about her household work, chanting softly to herself an old Norse ditty. After she had sung a verso or two she sent her little child to look at the tub, and see whether the cap was whummilled (turned upside down) or no. The child said the water was stirring but the bowl was afloat. The woman went on singing a little louder, and presently sent the child again to see how matters stood. This time the child said there was a strange swell in the water, but the cap still floated. The woman then sang more loud and fierce, and again she sent. The child came back saying the waters were strangely troubled, and the cap was whummilled. Then she cried out, "The ton is done!" and left off singing. On the same day came word that a fishing yawl had been lost in the Roust, and all on board drowned. The same story is told of some women in the island of Fetlar, who, when a boat's crew had perished in the Bay of Funzie, were found sitting round a well, muttering mysterious words over a wooden bowl supernaturally agitated. The whole thing, as Hibbert says, forcibly reminds one of the old Norse superstition of the Quern Song.
It was no unusual thing for men and women of otherwise peaceable and cleanly life to tamper with the elements in those dim and distant days. Even seventy years ago a man named John Sutherland of Papa Stour was
A Family of bright young sons lived on one of the Shetland islands. A certain Norwegian lady had reason to think herself slighted by one of them, and she swore she would have her revenge. The sons were about to cross a voe or ferry : but one was to take his shelty, while the rest were to go by the boat. Mysteriously the shelty was found to have been loosed from its tether, and was gone; so all the heirs male of the race were under the necessity of going by the boat across the voe. It was the close of day—a mild windless evening—not a ripple was on the water, not a cloud in the sky; and no one on either bank heard a cry or saw the waters stir. But the youths never returned home. When they were searched for the next day they could nowhere be found—only the boat drifting to the shore, unharmed and unsteered. When the deed was done the shelty was brought back to its tether as mysteriously as it had been taken away.
Sixteen hundred and sixteen was a fruitful year for the witch-finders. There was Jonka Dyneis of Shetland, who, offended with one Olave, fell out in most vile cursings and blasphemous exclamations, saying that within a few days his bones should be "raiking" about the banks; and as she predicted so it did turn out—Olave perishing by her sorcery and enchantments. And not content with this, she cursed the other son of the poor widowed mother, and in fourteen days he also died, to Jonka's own undoing when the Shetlanders would bear her iniquities no longer. And there was Katherine Jonesdochter, also of Shetland, who cruelly transferred her husband's natural infirmities to a stranger.—From 'Witch Stories' collected by E. Lynn Linton.
he town of Stromness forms excellent head-quarters for tourists who like to lead an amphibious life during the summer and autumn months. Excursions may be made by land and sea to all points of the compass, and visitors who have heard about the Dwarfie Stone, the Old Man of Hoy, the Kame Echo, and the Enchanted Carbuncle generally select the first clear and settled day for a run to the most romantic of the Orkney Islands. Clear weather and a good start in the morning are absolutely necessary to make the trip enjoyable. The sail between Stromness and Salwick Little—the usual landing-place in Hoy—gives us an opportunity of admiring the dexterity with which the boatmen handle their craft in order to take due advantage of favourable currents. So capricious is the wind in the vicinity of Hoy that some of the crew almost invariably sit with the ropes of the sails held firmly in their hands, ready to spring the sheets should any sudden emergency arise.
About three miles from the landing-place we reach the meadow of the Kame, which is haunted by a mocking spirit that gives back song for song, shout for shout, yell for yell. There is something absolutely eerie in the awful distinctness of this unseen mocker's hollow peals of laughter. The sound is fitted to recall the description in Guy Mannering of Dominie Sampson's dreadful and ogre-like "ha! ha! ho." From the echo-haunted plain we strike of in the direction of the Old Man, scaling the western slope of the steep hills with labour dire, and bathing our hot brows at last in the cool delicious breeze that comes streaming over leagues of sunny waves. Our course now lies due southward along a "path sublime"—the summit of a colossal wall of precipices that rise one thousand feet from the sea in sheer ascent. Grasp the ledges with firm hold, and looking over the face of the cliffs, try to fathom with your eye the dizzy depth. The crows and choughs observed by Edgar from the summit of Dover cliff, "showed scarce so gross as beetles," and hero you see the gulls, that wing the midway air, diminished to the size of butterflies. There is no samphire-gatherer hanging half-way down to assist your estimate of the depth—no fisherman walking on the beach—no "tall anchoring barque diminished to a cock, her cock a buoy;" but you see the billows far below breaking at the foot of the rocks, and the low voice of the sea is like the sound in the cavities of the sea-shell when
The rock called the Old Man of Hoy is a huge primeval pillar, standing out from the lino of cliffs, like the stacks of Duncansbay, in solemn and solitary grandeur. It has a singularly wild and majestic appearance, and forms a conspicuous object in the seaward view from the Caithness coast. Malcolm, the soldier-poet of Orkney, has likened the insulated cliff-pillar to
Deaf to the sea-mew's plaint and the sullen plunge of the waves in the arches below, blind to the beauties of sunset and moonrise, heedless alike of calm and storm, the Old Man of the Sea, like a grim and veteran sentinel at his post, keeps silent watch and ward amid the lonely waters.
atherine Grant, in the
John Sinclair—a cruel villain to others, if loving to his own—was tried in the year
In
"Mareoune" Richart, alias Langland, dwelt on one of the wild Orkney islands, not far from where mad Elspeth Sandisome kept the whole country in fear lest she should do something terrible to herself or to others. Marion was invited to go to the house, and try her skill at curing her, for she was known to be an awful witch, and able to do whatever she had a mind in the way of healing or killing. So she wont, and set herself to her charm. She took some "remedie water"—which she made into "remedy water," by carrying it in a round bowl to the byre, where she cast into it something like "great salt," taken from her purse, spitting thrice into the bowl, and blowing in her breath—and with this magic "remedie watter forspeking," she bade Elspeth's woman-servant wash her feet and hands, and she would be as well as ever she had been before. This was bad enough; but worse than this, she came to Stronsay on a day, asking alms of "Andro Coupar, skipper of ane bark," to whom said Andrew rudely, "Away witch, carling; devils ane farthing ye will fall!" whereupon went Marion away "verie offendit; and incontinentlie he going to sea, the bark being vnder saill, he ran wode, and wald half luppen our-boord; and his sone seeing him gat him in his armes, and held him; quhairvpon the sicknes immediatelie left him, and his sone ran made; and Thomas Paiterson, seeing him tak his madnes, and the father to turn weill, ane dog being in the bark, took the dog and bladdit him vpon the twa schoulderis, and thaireftir flang the said dogg in the sea, quhairby those in the bark were saiffed." So Marion Richart, alias Langland, learnt the hangman's way to the grave in the year of grace
June, 1596From 'Witch Stories' collected by E. Lynn Linton,
The Anderson Institute was erected and founded in
Cure for Rheumatism.—The following is said to be a cure for rheumatism : "Take one pound of hops, two quarts of water; boil down to one quart; add one penny worth of saltpetre; strain, and bottle it for use. A small glassful to be taken three times a day.
Burns and Scalds.—Of all applications for a burn, there are few equal to a simple covering of common wheat flour. This is always at hand, and while it requires no skill in using, produces most astonishing effects.
Cuts.—The leaves of geraniums are an excellent application for cuts, where the skin is rubbed off, and other wounds of that kind. One or two leaves must be bruised and applied on linen to the part, and the wound will begin to heal in a very short time.
Sprains.—Keep the joint perfectly at rest. If one of the joints of the leg be injured, let the person keep upon a bed or sofa. Apply warm moist flannels to the injured part, or a large poultice of bread and water. If the pain be very considerable, a few leeches should be applied. Above all else, avoid motion of the joint.
Neuralgia, Toothace, &c.—From two to six drops of cajeput oil upon cotton wool, put upon the painful tooth, will subdue the pain more effectually than any essential oil. A smart pain will be felt, but only for a few seconds.
Quinsy.—A simple and efficacious remedy in this distressing malady is an onion poultice. Bake or roast three or four large onions until soft. Peel quickly and beat flat; put them into a thin muslin bag, about three inches deep, that will reach from ear to ear. Apply it speedily, as warm as can be borne to the throat. Keep it on night and day, taking fresh onions when the strength of the first poultice is exhausted. Flannel must be worn round the throat when the poultice is removed.
Offensive Breath.—Nothing is so good as the concentrated solution of cholride of soda, as prepared by Beaufoy. From six to ten drops in a wine-glassful of pure spring water, taken immediately after washing in the morning, will sweeten the breath by disinfecting the stomach, which will be benefited by the medicine.
For Recent Bruises.—Put one table-spoonful of tincture of arnica into half a pint of warm water. Apply constantly or the first hour. Then apply the same quantity of tincture of arnica with cold water.
Remedy for Moths.—A small piece of paper or linen moistened with spirits of turpentine, and put into a drawer for a single day, two or three times a year, is an effectual preservative against moths.
Keeping Butter.—There is a very common mistake made in keeping sweet butter, namely, in water. This very quickly injures the flavour of it. It should be kept in a cool, airy place, but perfectly dry. When butter is made up in small fancy shapes, and kept for two or three days in water, the flavour is affected, and the butter more or less injured.
Tender Feet may be cured by dissolving one pound of bay salt in one gallon of spring water; and by soaking or bathing the feet therein about five minutes night and morning.
Bran Tea.—A very cheap and useful drink in colds, fevers, and restlessness from pain: Put a handful of bran in a pint and a half of cold water; let it boil rather more than half an hour; strain; and flavour with sugar and lemon juice according to taste.
Cheap Fuel.—The following recipe, taken from Parkes' "Chemical Essays," is worth attention now coal is so dear : "Get half a peck of clay, or stiff loam; make it soft with water; then put one peck of small coal to it and mix them well together until you can roll it into several parts like pieces of charcoal and long eggs. Any other combustible may be added and mixed up with the above, such as sawdust, tanners' waste, bark, curriers shavings, &c. As much can be made in an hour as would last several days.
To Cleanse Silks.—The finest and most, delicate silks may be cleansed, without injury to the fabric or colour, by the pulp of a few potatoes finely scraped into water. Silk which has got wrinkled may be rendered nearly as smooth as when new, by sponging it on the surface with a weak solution of gum arable or white glue, and then ironing it on the wrong side.
To Take Ink out of Linen.—Take a piece of tallow, melt it, and dip the spotted part of the linen into the tallow. The linen may then be washed, and the spots will disappear without injuring the linen.
To Remove Carpet Spots.—A few drops of carbonate of ammonia in a small quantity of warm rain-water, will prove a safe and easy anti-acid, &c., and will change, if carefully applied, dis-coloured spots upon carpets.?
obert Strange, an eminent engraver who flourished in the middle of the last century, was a Scotchman, and was born at Pomona, the principal of the Orkney Islands, in
The earliest effort of W. & R. Chambers to communicate popular instruction, after having commenced their Journal, was to issue a series of sheets under the title of Chambers's Information for the People. That was in
After a lapse of fourteen years, it has again become necessary, from the constant and rapid advance of every branch of Science and Art, that the work should undergo a further revision. This has been effected with the assistance of Dr. A. Findlater, who rendered such valuable aid in the preparation of Chambers's Encyclopædia. The various treatises and articles have accordingly been recast, so as to be adapted as nearly as possible to the present state of human knowledge.
Designed in an especial manner for the People, though adapted for all classes, the work will be found to comprise those subjects on which information is of the most importance; such as the more interesting branches of science—physical, mathematical, and moral; natural history, political history, geography, and literature; together with a few miscellaneous papers, which seem to be called for by peculiar circumstances affecting the British people. Thus everything is given that is requisite for a generally well-informed man in the less highly educated portions of society, and nothing omitted appertaining to intellectual cultivation, excepting subjects of professional or local interest. It will be understood, then, that the Information for the People is not an encyclopædia in the comprehensive meaning of the word, but rather one embracing only the more important departments of general knowledge. The ruling object, indeed, has been to afford the means of self-education, and to introduce into the mind, thus liberated and expanded, a craving after still further advancement.
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On the occasion of the late reinstatement of the Gladstone Ministry without any doubt the most able speech was that of Mr. D' Israeli; his final words were particularly remarkable, "We are now emerging from the fiscal period in which almost all the public men of this generation have been brought up. All questions of trade and navigation, the incidence of taxation and of public economy is settled. But there are other questions arising of not less importance, but of a deeper and higher reach and range—the attributes of a Constitutional Monarchy; the question whether the Aristocratic principle shall be recognized by our Constitution, and if so, in what form; whether the Commons of England shall remain a state of the realm, numerous but privileged and qualified, or whether they should degenerate into an indiscriminate multitude (laughter); whether a national church shall be maintained, and what should be its rights and what should be its duties; the functions of corporations, and the sacredness of endowments (cheers); the tenure of landed property
Many persons will say that this country has now arrived at a period when the above mentioned institutions are about to be put on their trial: the question then will be, not whether they have done material service towards the past greatness of England, but whether they are fitted to the times in which we now live, or in other words, whether they are in accordance with what our German brothers call the The county of Sutherland contains more than a million acres of land belonging to Zeitgeist! Let us see how certain learned foreigners look on this question. Dr. L. Buchner, the talented author of "Force and Matter," and many other scientific works, forcibly remarks: "If in politics we have long since come to replace the old system of oppression and domination by the now generally-recognized principle of equal rights and equal duties, we must likewise socially replace the system of mutual plunder which has hitherto prevailed," and speaking of the question of property in land he observes, "such a restoration of the property in land to the community, moreover, even if we leave entirely out of the question, all social reasons, or scruples of justice, is an economical or political necessity, and must finally be done in spite of all opposition. For the more the population increases the more necessary it becomes to obtain from the soil the utmost produce, both in quantity and in quality. It can; therefore, no longer be left to the individual possessor of land to decide what he will do with it, but how much it may be made to produce for the interests of the community; thus in England vast tracts of cultivable land are either left wholly unemployed
Two owners, out of which not more than 23,000 acres are under cultivation. The English lords prefer making sheep-runs, hunting ground, or enormous parks out of cultivable land.
"The Land-question, it is well known, has assumed an immense importance latterly in England, that country of political freedom, on account of the peculiarities of its land tenure, and the agitation in favour of community in possession of land, or at least of a thorough-going reform of the existing state of things, has already made itself felt and obtained many adherents.
"According to Radenhausen (Isis, vol. iii., p.354) land slavery in England has been one of the principal means of making the high nobility enormously rich, whilst, on the other hand, it has placed the greatest difficulties in the way of agricultural improvement of the soil which is so necessary.
"Ground rents appear to be most unjust when they are produced by simple increase in the population, and the augmented value of landed property caused thereby. This is most striking in and near large growing cities, where pieces of land, which were previously of little or no value, often become real gold fields within a short period. This kind of rent or augmentation of property is evidently produced without the assistance from the individual merely by the industry and activity of the community, but which, nevertheless, becomes the result of its industry to the individual owner of the property without any deduction, Here, even without the introduction of communistic possession of the
These views of educated and intelligent foreigners are of very high value, being the result of calm and dispassionate reflection, and may be accepted as an apt preface to the matters mooted in the present small brochure.
How is it that the possession of Land is so coveted by gentlemen? Almost every other kind of property gives a better interest. Consols give as good a security with infinitely less trouble; still the ambition of a wealthy tradesman is to buy an estate only yielding, perhaps, three per cent, and costing enormously in the shape of an attorney's bill.
How does this happen?
Because the rags of Feudalism still cling to us. When William the Conqueror took possession of these islands his first thought was to secure his conquests, and so, with little ceremony, he parcelled out the country into large estates over which he placed his chief officers. He did not give these estates in fee simple. The land, (as in Asia now,) belonged to the Crown, that is, to the people as represented by the Crown, and these Dukes, Counts and Barons were
tenants of the Crown. And what was the rent they paid? They paid all the military expenses, which, in these days, amount to twenty-seven millions, and are paid by the landless people—in other words they were bound to serve the King in time of war and to bring into the field a certain number of their tenants according to the extent of their possessions.
Thus we see that the principle of absolute private possession in land had not yet made its appearance, and the axiom "that property has its duties as well as its privileges," (the utterance of which by the late Mr. Drummond brought such opprobrium on his head) was then in active force.
The country in those ancient days was neither more nor less than an organized armed camp, these great nobles being the officers, their duties clear and defined as their rank, which was military. The Sovereign in those days did not bestow titles on mere money bags.
In order to stereotype this military class and to keep a great number of landlords in this position as military officers ready to be called out in time of war, primogeniture and entail were established so that the eldest son stepped into the place of the fallen sire inheriting his duties and his pay. If there were no sons, but daughters only, the King had always a favourite officer on whom to bestow the hand of the heiress.
In the middle ages when force was uppermost, this social and political system of feudalism was perhaps as good a scheme as a nation of warriors could invent. Like all other systems it was the product neither of one
The great men of those days had unquestionably great talents. A sharp boy in a good modern school could doubtless have taught the greatest of those statesmen more of political economy than the King's Council had ever dreamed of, and a clever subaltern of our army could have given William the Conqueror valuable lessons in strategy, simply because, unlike the lower animals, mankind has a collective store of knowledge which is added to from age to age. Still there were great men in those days, men of powerful brains as well as muscular bodies, and these powerful men were usually found in the ranks of the nobles, recruited as they were incessantly by men of energy and talent.
As to the morals of the age, we know that the standard was not high. Force and fraud gained the day, as they do now in Afghanistan and other countries which seem to be in what may be termed the age of iron. If one of these nobles died while his heir was a child, the chances were ten to one against the child ever coming to its majority. If the child was a daughter, her's was probably a sad fate. Murders were rarely punished by law if the murderer was a man of rank; poison too was not unknown, while analysis was unheard of. We must then confess that many of the founders of our great families, the men whose Norman names are so coveted that some are weak enough to adopt them in these days, were unprincipled ruffians who gained their honours through foul dishonour, and I
The feudal system did not generally prevail until long after it had been established in England.
In Ireland, Scotland and Wales titles and rank were what may be loosely termed hereditary. The land was tribal property, the chief was the representative of the tribe and was largely paid in sheep, corn, oxen and the like, in order that he might be profusely hospitable, and exercise the functions of Commissary-General in time of war as well as those of Commander-in-Chief; but if he was greedy or tyrannical, the people fell away from him and sought other allegiance, and there was always some brother, uncle or nephew, or failing these, some bold adventurer to supplant or murder him.
The hereditary system has been always more or less clung to, and yet always swept away when necessary. The son or brother had the preference in these rude ages, but when he was incompetent to lead men, he was pushed aside in one way or another; but the more civilization advances, and with it, a greater security for life and property, this principle is apt to fall into contempt, for an incapable now placed in the position of leader cannot be brushed aside—he has all the force of an organized society to uphold him; hence he is apt to exhibit himself conspicuously as unfit for his post. Thus it is that our hereditary nobility is becoming contemptible in spite of occasional great men found in, or received into, its ranks.
In course of time the feudal system crept on and invaded Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and here we see the origin of those enormous estates in Scotland. The "properties," which almost cover counties, were tribal grounds occupied by members of one tribe, happy hunting grounds for the red-headed Celts who loved their Chief as their Father or Patriarch. The civilized courts in Edinburgh and London gradually attracted these Chiefs to the capitals—they were made nobles, and then their tribal hunting grounds were granted as feudal holdings, and the next step made them absolute private proprietors.
In the reign of Charles II., of infamous memory, the last great robbery was completed.
Before I give the details of this, I must remind my readers that Parliament had several times solemnly protested against alienating the crown lands, though such acts of robbery were perpetrated from time to time by worthless monarchs; thus William Rufus was compelled to resume large grants of land which he had made, and Henry II. resumed the crown lands granted by Stephen. Richard I. sold several estates to raise funds for his crusade, but after his second coronation at Winchester he resumed the same, "alleging that it was not in his power to alien anything appertaining to the same whereby his state was to subsist. Noakes.
And now when Charles II. was in exile a number of these noble lords thought they would get him back again and "make a good thing of it," so they conspired together to induce him to aid them in getting rid of their feudal burdens (precisely as if a number of rogues farming an estate were to conspire to repudiate paying the rent), and on condition of Charles granting this aid, they would help him in recovering the throne which the first Charles had so deservedly forfeited. Accordingly in
Let us take another page out of history. "By the 4th William and Mary, cap. i, intituled, 'An Act for granting to their Majesties an aid of 4 Noakes.s. in the pound for carrying on a vigorous war with France,' it was enacted that a land tax of 4s. in the pound on the true yearly rent, and a tax of 24s. in the £100 on personal property, should be raised for the public service. The interest on money was then 6 per cent., and personal property being supposed to yield 6 per cent, also, the two assessments were at the same rate. This form of tax was adhered to for nine years, but in s. in the pound, and real property to be charged with as much equality and indifferency as possible by a pound rate towards the sum by this Act imposed;' so that by this ingenious contrivance, personal property is to pay 15 per cent, of its income, and real property is to make up the deficit of the tax imposed. The different counties, boroughs, and towns are thus assessed at a certain sum; the tax is renewed yearly at the same sum not at the same rale, so that the increased real property arising from discovery of mines, collieries, and the extension of agriculture does not bear the tax. By this admirable plan, some places pay a penny and others a farthing in the pound at the present time. The land tax was subsequently raised to 2,307,627, and is by 38 George III., cap. 60, converted into a perpetual tax instead of an annual one, but subject to redemption."
A little reflection will show that, had the land-tax continued in its original force, there would have been no national debt. The money accruing from the lands robbed from the people, has been devoted to the support of a large class of idlers living in the height of luxury and extravagance. Let any one deny this simple fact if he can.
After all, let us reflect that these aristocrats are no worse and no better than the rest of us. They found themselves in possession of power, and behaved as all classes ever have done when thus situated. If we were to send a Parliament of brewers to govern us, no doubt all foreign beer would be heavily taxed, and other laws would be framed to favour brewers; if grocers were to be sent in a great majority to Parliament, we should have an end put to co-operative stores, and be obliged to drink British wines; if none but tenant farmers, we should have Corn Laws re-established, no Foreign Cattle Importation, and a Tenant-right Bill, that would leave the landlord little to enjoy. None should be trusted with exclusive and unchecked power, it is good for no individual, and, least of all, for any class or trade. A large class has no conscience. The units composing such keep each other in countenance. The landlords have behaved so unscrupulously simply because the nation entrusted, and still entrusts them with too much power. Hitherto the tenant farmer, unprotected by the Ballot, was bound to vote at his landlord's dictation; now he can vote as he chooses. Let him remember that we have enough, and more than enough, of some interests, the chief of which are lawyers and landlords in the House of Commons, and a
Proudhon horrified all Europe some thirty years ago, by declaring that "property was robbery." Without in the least adopting this monstrous theory, we may safely say that the origin of the largest estates in Great Britain was pure robbery. Should we then try to get them back again? God forbid, at least, not in the way my readers would understand the question; but there is a safe and simple mode of breaking up enormous estates in process of time, and this is by doing our utmost to get rid of the mischievous laws and customs of entail and primogeniture. The natural simple process in every country (unblest by an aristocracy) is for land to be divided amongst children at the death of the parent, not necessarily in absolutely equal divisions, but divided. From time to time some man buys up the portions of his brothers, and perhaps others beside, but at his death again there is a division, and so it comes to pass that, after all, the main part of the land belongs to the people, to the cultivator, that is, to those who best know how to use it. In France the division at the death of the owner is compulsory; a man cannot there "make an eldest son," though he may leave a double portion to a favourite child. This French fashion is spoken of with horror by our gentry, who always seem to be afraid that the division will go on ad infinitum until a man will be obliged to cultivate a portion of soil that will not keep him, but let us look rather to practical experience than to what might happen. As a matter of fact the land never is to any extent too minutely subdivided; and as a
Land and Labour Leagues, and a Land Tenure Reform Association in England, but no such things in France. They are satisfied with their system, which is a natural and wholesome one.
To see how this feudal land system has worked in a purely agricultural country we must turn to Ireland, and I cannot do better than quote a touching example given by Sir George Grey in a letter to the Daily News :—"In
"In of these sisters, the eastern moiety allotted to Thomas Thynne, ancester of the present Marquis of Bath, was worth £1,300 a year, and the value of the western moiety allotted to Robert Shirley, Earl Ferrers, was about the same. Each half of the property then continued to descend, in accordance with existing law and the existing custom of entail, in unbroken bulk to the next heir male."
"The next date at which I take the Ferney property up is the year 1843 was about
I am tempted to go on quoting from this most eloquent letter of Sir George Grey. Never to my mind has the case been more clearly put; primogeniture and entail in all their naked reality. Aristocracy in its true colours, stripped of its tinsel and rouge. And the end and aim of all this? For what was this vast human sacrifice? What was the great national benefit to accrue from the tears, the toil, the life-long misery of so many thousands of God's creatures? To produce a modern nobleman, a man who is usually precisely like any other well-fed human being, too often one
And this is the system that nine-tenths of the established clergy support. A clergy established to preach the gospel
Some people have asserted that Absenteeism is the great evil of Ireland. Assuming that society, where the many are doomed to toil for one drone, is a healthy condition of the social system, assuming that the rich juices of the body ought to go to nourish a wen, then it would appear as if the drone had better stay and drop a few of his sovereigns round about him, but I deny that such is a healthy social state, and I further say that the presence of the landlord is often a great evil. A man cultivating a farm in Wales, and paying his rent to, let us say, an old lady in London, is often in a far better position than one close to the Hall. He is not overrun with game, he is not spied on and bullied by the game keeper, he is not plagued about going or not going to church, for strange to say the man who receives the rent has sometimes the impertinence to interfere with the tenant's conscience. In short the tenant who is away from his landlord is not "looked after," and therefore leads a more independent and manlier existence. As for the money the landlord spends on the spot it is not worth consideration. If the whole of the landlords of England were to live permanently in London, they would still require country produce, the same money would be given for it.
But let us reflect on the position of this favoured being on his own estate. He is, as we all know, a little prince in power and influence. A man of very exceptional virtues has an immense scope for doing good, but how
But let us inquire for a moment whether this state of things is good for cultivation. Surely we all have an interest in this question. Arthur Young says :—"Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert." Now to whom does an English entailed estate belong? Not to the so-called owner, for he has only what is called a "life interest" in it. It may be said that no one can have more than a life interest in any property, but a life interest in an entailed estate is a very different thing from a life ownership. The squire coming into an entailed estate finds probably all sorts of charges upon it, dowagers and pensioners have to be provided for out of it. He cannot sell a portion of it as it belongs in part to a child in the cradle or even unborn. Perhaps a town is growing out towards some of his estate, a neighbouring manufacturer would give £1,000 an acre for some of his land, whereon he might erect large works, give employment to hundreds, and open a capital market for farm produce, but no, the land is locked up, nothing can be done, and even if the squire or lord could sell a portion, he does not like to have his game preserves disturbed, and so he wont. Perhaps a congregation of Baptists or Methodists wants a place of worship, and offers the landlord a fair sum for a plot of ground. How can he encourage dissenters? Why can they not go to the parish church, where perhaps last year evangelicalism was preached, but now it is adorned with flowers and pictures, and a sort of mass is performed. The bailiff suggests sundry improvements, the cost of which he estimates at £3,000 or £4,000. But if
Have the labourers then any sense of property? I declare that I have travelled all over Europe, and in many parts of Asia and Africa—I never saw any cultivators of the soil in such an abject state of degradation as are the peasantry of England, excepting perhaps the fellahs of Egypt. If any one wishes to defend the aristocratic system his opponent need not trouble himself with any elaborate arguments to refute anything he may say, he has only to point to the peasantry of Great Britain as a practical illustration of the system.
Has any one of my readers ever wished to purchase a piece of land? I know of no healthier or more wholesome ambition in the breast of an industrious man than the desire to possess a piece of laud of his own, which he might
But just try to buy a bit of land. Step into an auction room and bid for a small plot, say three or four hundred pounds' worth. From the moment it is knocked down to you, for weeks or months to come your life will be a burden to you. Attorneys will infest you with their parchments and horrible jargon, the meaning of which you can scarcely guess at, the only thing clear about it being that you are going to be legally and respectably garrotted and fleeced. I have heard of a hard-working poor man who, after a lifetime of industry, ventured to bid for his cottage and garden which, with the rest of a large property, was for sale. It was knocked down to him for £100, and, "now," thought he, "I will make that bit of ground a model garden." He began at once to dig and trench, to drain, to manure, to plant, he was a happy man, he was working not only for this year, but for the next, and the year after that he would raise the value of it considerably, and when he died, the sale thereof would go far to keep his widow in comfort for the remainder of her days. His bit of money was all ready, £100 and a few pounds besides for incidental expenses. He supposed the lawyer would have a bill, be had heard those sort of gentry were dangerous customers, but surely a £5 note at the outside would satisfy him for the bits of papers necessary for a cottage and garden.
A good time elapsed before he heard from the lawyer, meantime the poor man was living, in what is termed, a fool's paradise. At length about a barrow full of parchments came, which were to make the purchase secure. The
This, of course, is an extreme instance, but it is a true one, and by no means an improbable one. But I defy any one to contradict the assertion, that if you buy one hundred pounds' worth of land, you will have from twenty to thirty pounds to pay in legal expenses. This is monstrous. If you buy a hundred-guinea horse have you to pay twenty pounds to some one for passing it over? If you buy a hundred pounds' worth of hay have you to pay thirty pounds (not for hauling or stacking), but simply for taking possession? Supposing you had a ship load of wool to send to Prance, you would, of course, have a considerable sum to pay for the conveyance, and you would not grumble, but if you wished only to send a sample, and so despatch two pounds of wool, what would be your feelings if you had to pay as much for the conveyance of your small parcel as for the ship-load? And supposing this were the rule, why, of course, no small parcels would be conveyed, neither are small parcels of land conveyed from seller to buyer in England, except amongst rich men, on account of the monstrous charges. The cause of all this mischievous complication is the supposed necessity for an aristocracy.
Now, let me ask what an aristocrat is? We need not go far into the definition of the word. It is composed of two Greek words, signifying the rule of the best. In this country a rich man is assumed to be the best man. As a matter of fact, any one who buys an estate and entails it, is an aristocrat.
And what, after all, is the usual origin of the modern aristocrat? In the iron age, war was the road to fortune; in the present golden age, commerce and money-making—per fas et nefas. I do not say that the modern road to rank is less worthy than the ancient, but it is not more noble. The stock-broker, the projector of bubble companies, and in Wales especially, the unscrupulous attorneys and moneylenders share with those whose fortunes are built up by a life of commercial enterprise, combined with blameless integrity, the honours of landed proprietorship. No one would envy these men their fortunes, but is there anything so transcendentally noble in the art of money-making that the lucky ones should be formed into a privileged class, and that our laws and constitution should be vitiated to do them honour!
No sooner has a man made his fortune than he wants to be a sort of feudal chief amongst his tenantry. He has children, and he begins by disinheriting all but one, the eldest son, after the manner of the warriors of Normandy!
One might suppose that when a father gathers around him his chubby bairns by the fire-side he would love them equally, that Johnny the eldest would not be loved more than the bright-eyed Tommy, and the mild-eyed little Mary, but this wretched sham of a modem feudalism bids the man whose breast is swollen with a mean ambition, to ape his wealthier neighbours, to sacrifice his younger sons and daughters, to allow the latter, if they don't marry, to wear out their lives in some mean lodgings in a mean provincial town. I have known "eldest sons" made on
But perhaps our sharp attorney may have accumulated £5,000, or even £10,000 a year, and thus become a territorial aristocrat. Of course, in one of those books, written by a sort of literary pander for the unwholesome passions of these rich upstarts, there appears a long and stately pedigree of Mr Brown, whose father probably drove pigs to market before he put his son into Cheatem's office as errand boy. There are but faint traditions of old grand-father Brown, a day labourer possibly, but all the common names of England and Wales are to be found in the peerage, and the arms of the Earl of Derby, or some other magnate, are forthwith assumed on the strength of the family names.
Perhaps Brown's ambition soars higher and he longs for a title, something hereditary, to transmit with his estate. Now let us reflect for a moment on the monstrous absurdity of an hereditary mark of honour. A man may do some great deed, he may codify our laws, or defeat our enemies, and the country will delight to honour him by a title, but what has his son done for us? He may be a respectable and worthy man, or he may be a rogue, still he is to bear a title of honour and in many cases even to govern us.
Our friend the supposed lawyer or tradesman is ambitious of a title. He has spent his life in collecting the coin of the realm and has dirtied his fingers considerably in the process, he has never been proved or even suspected of one generous or noble action. The dispositions to do
But it is of more interest to us to enquire about him as a landlord. Now what is a landlord? He is simply a man who has invested his money in land or inherits money so invested. He owns the land, and a certain number of farmers pay him a yearly sum for the privilege of cultivating it, the proceeds being of course the profit, out of which the rent is paid. Everything produced on the land belongs by law to the farmer, including of course the game which feeds on the crops. Usually but not always, the landlord makes an agreement with the tenant to give up the game to him (the landlord), and this may fairly be done, but not unfrequently a shabby fraud is perpetrated by the latter, who, taking advantage of the vagueness of the agreement, and of the dependant position of the tenant, keeps a far greater amount of game than the
If the fanners complain that their turnips are destroyed by animals that nibble and spoil ten roots for one they eat, they run a very good chance of losing their farms, and this I maintain is downright robbery. When a man, who
A writer in the Field newspaper, an organ of the landlords, preaches a long sermon to the unreasonable farmers. He seems to think it monstrous that the landlord cannot have an enormous shooting rent as well as a farming rent,—the game which brings the former being fed of course at the expense of the tenants.
"Beware then in time," he says, "and listen to a tale that is strictly true. Some twenty years ago a friend of mine, who had a good estate let very low—no leases—a good many hares, of which he was most liberal to his tenants, allowing them, too, always to course on proper application, received a 'round robin' from his farmers complaining of the hares. He was in London; so summoning them to be on a certain day at the steward's office he met them there, and, holding out their letter, asked if that was their production. Of course they answered that it was. 'Then, gentlemen, I give you all notice to quit your farms; gentlemen, good morning.' And he returned to town that night. Shortly afterwards he received another letter, begging to recall their first, and asking him to come down again to meet them. Accordingly my friend went. 'You wish to recall your letter I hear?' 'Certainly,' was the
The writer seems to believe that a body of British farmers are to go on from generation to generation suffering this sort of thing, but I venture to think that he is much mistaken.
In other matters besides game the landlord often seems to have outrageous ideas. After all his proper functions are little more than those of a money-lender with a mortgage on the farm. He is a capitalist and he invests his money in the productive soil, and, in England, in farm building, gates, and sundry other matters. We often hear of a good landlord, one who spends his money on the improvement of his estate, and he is usually held up to our admiration as something a little lower than the angels. In what other trade, profession, or business would a man be held up for our admiration who invested his money in plant, machinery, and the like, looking of course for a proportionate profit, and yet a landlord who does this is lauded to the skies!
But there are landlords, and I have known such, who never lose an opportunity of defrauding their tenants in such matters as the repair of out-buildings, &c., and who are not ashamed to raise their rents the moment the farm as become more valuable by the labour of the tenant. Now the very essence of property is the product of a man's labour, and the landlord who is ever ready to raise the rent on the slightest pretext is morally, if not legally, a thief. I need hardly say that human laws are very imperfect, and that their are many thieves at large who deserve to be on the treadmill.
A man occupying a farm, and doing his duty by it, acquires a certain property in the land beyond that of the mere money-lender who has bought it, and the state of things is imperfect where a landowner can suddenly turn out of their homes fourteen or fifteen tenants to make room for a man with more money, when many of these hard-working men had taken these farms from the hands of their fathers and great-grandfathers, and increased the value considerably by their skill and labour, and yet I have known this done.
We may imagine almost any freak on the part of the capitalist. He might own a province and clear away all the natives to introduce Chinese or some other strange people, or he might lay waste a great part of it to devote it to game. The latter is the more extravagant freak of the two, and yet, strange to say, it has been done, not in Timbuctoo, but in Great Britain. Thousands of families, good, honest, God-fearing Christians, the men who furnished some of our best soldiers and sailors, have been, during the
absolute private property in land, that the holding of land should be more subject to the requirements of the community, that no year-to-year-tenantry, slaves to the caprices of one man should be allowed, but that contracts between landlord and tenant should be subservient to the good of the community, and to the productiveness of the soil.
Does it not stand to reason that if a man is safe from capricious eviction he will farm better, and if he farms better it is equally obvious that his labours (with those of his kind) tend to cheapen food—and legislation leading to this the community has a right to demand.
But of all the monstrous claims that the landlord has put forward, that of coercing his tenant's votes is about the most flagitious, and yet, before the ballot, the landlords of England and Scotland usually, and of Wales almost universally looked upon the votes of their tenants as absolutely their own, and were guilty of great cruelty in punishing their tenants, and of abominable dishonesty in possessing themselves of the unexhausted improvements of their discharged tenants, and of great meanness in trying to deny their deeds.
Since the people of England are divorced from their soil in order to keep up an aristocracy, a privileged class of
It is said again that this system secures a centre of
The fact is the system is a sham, a miserable copy of what was once a real military organization. It has crept on us by degrees as a baleful growth, and has corrupted the minds and manners of our population in proportion to its growth. Thus it is that wealth, mere wealth independent of talent, (unless money-making may be dignified by the term, financial talent), of virtue, of public service, is idolized and can command anything. A mere banker, or pawnbroker, whose god is in his cash-box, whose manners are those of a boor, can nevertheless
There used to be an old superstition concerning blood and race which, I believe, even yet lingers in the brains of love-sick milliners who read third-rate novels. It was supposed that the members of the House of Lords were of a finer breed than the rest of men. I do not deny for a moment that an aristocracy might be produced by careful selection of the finest specimens of the human race to breed from, but our aristocracy, the oldest families I mean, have married all sorts of women, sometimes for their beauty, sometimes for their free and easy virtue, but oftenest for their money, quite irrespective of their birth. I need not remind my farming friends that if they were to mix their stock anyhow, or turn out their racing stallions and mares amongst their cart stock, they would have some queer progeny. In the course of a few years, when the prize animals had died off, how could they boast of the queer crosses that remained? And thus it is with our aristocracy. They are no worse than any other class, but assuredly they are no better than any other set of people equally well fed. That we have a genuine aristocracy in England is most certain, and it is one that God made, not man. It belongs to no class, but scions of it spring from the cottage and from the hall. When shall we leave our base idols of clay and recognize sterling metal when we see it? Occasionally but rarely, a genuine man like Lawrence, or Clyde, is admitted into the House of Lords, but he must be rich or
But even a genuine nobleman, a man who has really served his country, does not necessarily reproduce his kind, his eldest son may possibly resemble his father, but in all probability he is very unlike him. Solomon was a wise man and a good king, but Rehoboam was a fool and a bad king. Nothing can be more irrational than to reward the eldest sons of the posterity of a man who has done a great and good service to the nation; it would be quite as just or unjust to put the eldest sons of the Russell family on the treadmill, because their ancestor in Henry the VIII.'s reign plundered church property.
How monstrous is it to invent a system to protect and keep wealthy the supposed best of the earth. They can only prove themselves to be the best by surpassing their fellow creatures in an equal race during life. Do you give the favourite horse in a race any advantages?
But no human system ever did produce an aristocracy. Several of what are called our "noblest" families are the adulterous fruit of lecherous kings and loose women, and in the present day it would, in fashionable life, be esteemed an honour to be allied to these ennobled (!) families. Thus the system of Brummagem tinsel-nobility is apt to debase
"A King may mak' a belted Knight A Marquis, Duke, or a' that, But an honest man's a boon his might A man's a man for a' that."
Thus sang Burns, one of God's noblemen, who could hardly breathe in the foetid air of modern flunkeyism.
But by far the most sad and serious feature in our land system is the condition of our agricultural labourers. In s. a week? In some counties, as Lincolnshire, the landed proprietors have cleared thousands of acres of all human habitations, thereby driving the poor into the crowded slums of towns, and the land was then worked by agricultural gangs of youths and girls, whose morals had fallen lower than those of animals, whose mouths were full of ribald and obscene language, poor girls who might have lived to be happy decent mothers, now driven about from place to place, sleeping in sheds promiscuously with youths, lost to all sense of sweet maidenly chastity, and this is the result of our gentry "doing what they like with their own." The noble men and women who, before God, are responsible for all this, crowd the churches weekly, where, amidst creeds, dogmas, and the great organized system that has usurped the name of Christianity, their consciences are killed outright. These are facts, shameful, awful facts, which ought to burn into the consciences of each and all of us. What is our church doing, what are the ministers of religion about?
Is it not a solemn mockery to teach the poor contentment with their lot when their lot is more wretched than the condition of animals, and when religion and morality are impossible in the miserable styes into which they are driven?
I appeal to Conservatives, to those who tremble, or profess to tremble at the revolutionary tendencies of the age, and who are calling on Mrs. Partington to bring her mop and stay the advance of the Atlantic ocean. I ask
one hundred and fifty, and nineteen and a half millions of acres in Scotland are owned by twelve persons. Men are living in such luxury as to rival the worst days of Imperial Rome, and millions can scarce buy bread. No society can call itself stable on such a foundation. Then we have the vast democracy of the towns who now have votes, and the labourers of the country who are determined to have them.
Now would it not be as well to let these men have a fair chance of having a stake in the country in the shape of some land of their own, which the most provident or industrious of them would soon acquire if they had a fair chance. True they might disturb your game, but beware lest you lose more than your game. We do not call on you to part with one penny of your property, nay, every acre you have would increase in value with the increased fertility of the country, when small landowners and peasant proprietors had begun to turn waste land into gardens, but we ask you to relax your stupid Conservatism, based as it is on the most short-sighted, purse-proud selfishness, we ask you to give up the mean ambition of continuing your ignoble names as associated with the property your father bought, or your grandfather acquired honestly or dishonestly.
Be just to your own flesh and blood and refuse to stifle the natural affections of your hearts in favour of this unworthy system. Break through the trammels of a vile superstition requiring such human sacrifices. Set free the
Is he to be told that he is but a madman to buy a piece of land, because the net return to the rich man is but 2 ½ per cent., while he himself is investing his savings at 2 ¾, or at best at 3."—Wren Hoskins.
I can fully sympathize with the pride of an illustrious birth, I can well understand the sentiment that carries back the mind to the glorious deeds of ancestry, but I deny that this is the spirit on which is founded the passion for "making an eldest son." Many of the lineal descendants of the most honoured and even ancient families, the heads of these families, are now inhabiting small villas at Holloway or clerk's lodgings in Islington. Why should the nation suffer that Lord Bempton, whose father was a notorious Stock Exchange Gambler, should nurse his ancestral pride in splendid state? Moreover, why deny the pride of birth to the younger sons, and if they are to indulge it, surely they must do so without entailed estates. The sentiment of ancestral pride, innocent enough when not offensively exhibited, is common to well nigh all of us. The struggling country surgeon, as he sits by his fireside,
for it does no harm to the community and requires not the sacrifice of the natural affections.
There are sentimentalists who may mournfully ask what is to become of our old nobility if the land monopoly is destroyed? It is indeed a sad fact in natural history that some races are inevitably doomed to be improved off the face of the earth or to be absorbed into civilized peoples with the ruthless march of civilization. The noble savage with his war paint, his feathers, his dignity and scorn of base mechanical labour, and his passion for the chase cannot hold his own any more than the noble Peer with his stars and garters, and titles, and dignity, and scorn of base labour, and love of field sports. The fact is that our form of civilization cannot co -exist with such people's, they require too much of the earth's surface for their support, either they will destroy civilization as they have done in some parts of Scotland, and as the Bedouins have done in parts of Syria, clearing away large tracts of cultivated ground and villages, or else the civilized beings must make short work of them. That the tribes of
In a report of the growth of the Northern Pacific Railway it is said "the exploring parties have in some instances been compelled to fight their way through opposing and hostile Indians, but despite all this have carried their survey successfully to the Yellowstone." For Indians read landowners, and precisely the same story may be old of British Railways. On some lines the surveyors had to work by stealth on dark stormy nights and armed against the gamekeepers and labourers of the Peer, but here the analogy ends, our "Indians" mulcted the nation of more millions than we spent in the great Russian war, and having so despoiled us on the ground of damage to property, they are fabulously enriched by these very roads they opposed. One, and one only, I believe, the late Lord Taunton, returned £20,000 compensation money to the Great Western, which his conscience would not allow him to keep. Such consciences are rare indeed.
The people of the cities little know how much they suffer from the utter want of small cultivators.
In
The Engadine is the most elevated, the coldest and least fertile portion of Switzerland, and what says "Inglis," one of our most trusted travellers. "There is not a foot of waste land in the Engadine, the lowest part of which is not much lower than the top of Snowdon. Wherever grass will grow, there it is; where-ever a rock will bear a blade, verdure is seen upon it; wherever rye will succeed there it is cultivated. Barley and
Howitt says, speaking of the Canton of Zurich, "In England, with its great quantity of grass lands and its large farms, so soon as the grain is in, and the fields are shut up for hay grass, the country seems in a comparative state of rest and quiet. But here they are everywhere and forever hoeing and mowing, planting, and cutting, weeding and gathering. They have a succession of crops like a market gardener. They have their carrots, poppies, hemp, flax, sainfoin, lucerne, rape, colewort, cabbage, rutabaga, black turnips, Swedish and white turnips, teazels, Jerusalem artichokes, mangel wurzel, parsnips, kidney beans, vetches, Indian corn, buckwheat, madder, potatoes, their great crop of tobacco, millet—all, or the greater part, under family management in their own family allotments. They have had these things first to sow, many of them to transplant; to hoe, to weed, to clear off insects, to top, many of them to mow and gather in successive crops. They have their water-meadows, of which kind almost all their meadows are, to flood, to mow, and to reflood, water courses to re-open and to make anew; their early fruits to gather, to bring to market with their green crops of vegetables, their cattle, sheep, calves, fowls, and poultry to look after, their vines as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune and thin out the leaves where they are too thick; and any one may imagine what a scene of incessant labour it is." And I may add, of productive labour. Any English traveller will bear me witness that these peasantry, of the social rank of our own, have stores of linen,
I will now venture to offer a few suggestions as to our future legislation on the Land Question, premising that I pretend to no originality in my proposals :—
This idea will, of course, be deemed one of confiscation and robbery. There are several landowners in England who have opposed railways and every single attempt at improvement made by the towns in which their property was situated. In spite of themselves, however, in many cases, and in all cases, without the slightest exertion or sacrifice, or investment on their parts, but solely by the industry and providence of others,
7.—It is necessary to separate political power from landowning. The county rate should be levied and administered by an elective assembly, not by the county magistracy. These latter should be replaced by stipendiaries.
8.—The equal succession to real property, in case of intestacy, is scarcely worth mentioning. This trifling tribute to common justice is about to pass the legislature, let us hope, in a few months. That it has so long been resisted is a striking proof of the prejudices of Parliaments of Landlords. And here I would remark that at last the Scotch farmers are opening their eyes to Landlordism in Parliament, and if the electors of England and Wales follow suit, we may hope to have the House of Commons at least, less of a trade's union, whose partial legislation has been shown in the unjust and one-sided law of Hypothec, and who quite recently condemned the large and important city of Birmingham to disease and filth, rather than incommode slightly Sir Robert Peel and Sir Charles Adderly by the compulsory purchase of a piece of land for the sewage works. Thousands of poor citizens are to suffer discomfort, disease, and death rather than that the rich man should be annoyed.
The House of Lords, too, must be remodelled. At present it is an institution adapted to check every national aspiration
I am well aware that there is much open to criticism in the foregoing pages, but they are a humble contribution to the political offerings of the day. They are addressed mainly to the agriculturalists of England, who, after all, have more power than perhaps they are aware of. They have only faithfully to record their votes for those candidates who are averse to privilege and monopoly, and we shall see, even in our own day, a healthier system of land tenure in England, and in time the land may even come to belong mainly to the cultivators, large and small, which is the healthiest and most natural condition of any country.
Kerby & Endean, Printers, 190, Oxford Street, London.
The spade is now busy on the ground of Solferino and Magenta. The manumitted husbandman, now bidden to look up and and be cheerful because he has been set free gloriously, ruefully takes thought how he shall remedy the disorder his deliverers have brought to him. Almost which despair he gazes upon his crops, trodden into a mash by swiftly-passing legions; upon the stumps of his vine-trees, cut down pitilessly to warm his benefactors' soup; above all, upon the memorials they have left to him, of bodies thrust barely a foot below his soil, from which the sweltering sun distils the thick miasma of decomposition, encompassing him in a cloud too broad to travel out of. It will be long before those human shambles can be made to take the smooth, decent, tranquil aspect of a graveyard.
But for the people outside, who stood round watching the fight, with bated breath and senses painfully strained, it seemed a glorious, thrilling spectacle, that campaign just now played out. For those who sit at a distance and read all the shifts and turnings and general theatrical business of a war in the open field, the trumpet-blowing and fanfares, the flaunting colours and gaudy liveries, the marching and manoeuvring, the desperate charges and bits of dramatic heroism, have had a grand and pulse-thrilling effect which makes the eyes sparkle and the colour come and go. There is, at home, data from Aldershott, to furnish the upholstery and supply a light basis for fancy.
But this is all no more than the fine colouring of a consumptive cheek, or the bloom of a rotten apple. There is not, of all things existent, a more repulsive, coarse, untheatrical business than war, and what it brings with it. The delicate film of gaudiness rubs off in an hour; the gold lace tarnishes in a night, the bright uniforms, faded with rain and puddle stains, fall into rags and show great patches.
12mo Series, No, 51.]
Improvised camps become presently filthy swamps and open sewers. The grand "pomp and circumstance of glorious war" is well enough in the abstract: in its details and private bearings it is offensive, rough, and overpowering.
Think only of the common hackneyed expressions which pass so lightly between the lips when speaking of a great battle. We talk exultingly, and with a certain fire, of "a magnificent charge!" of "a splendid charge!" yet very few will think of the hideous particulars these two airy words stand for. The "splendid charge" is a headlong rush of men on strong horses urged to their fullest speed, riding down and overwhelming an opposing mass of men on foot. The reader's mind goes no further: being content with the information that the enemy's line was "broken" and" gave way." It does not fill in the picture. To do so effectively, we must think first of an ordinary individual run down in the public street by a horseman moving at an easy pace. The result is, usually, fracture and violent contusion. We may strengthen the tones of the picture by setting this horseman at full gallop, and joining to him a company of other flying horsemen. How will it then be with the unhappy pedestrian? So when the "splendid charge" has done its work, and passed by, there will be found a sight very much like the scene of a frightful railway accident. There will be the full complement of backs broken in two; of arms twisted wholly off; of men impaled upon their own bayonets; of legs smashed up like bits of firewood; of heads sliced open like apples; of other heads crunched into soft jelly by iron hoofs of horses; of faces trampled out of all likeness to anything human. This is what skulks behind "a splendid charge!" This is what follows, as a matter of course, when "our fellows rode at them in style," and "cut them up famously." Again, how often does the commander, writing home in his official despatches, dwell particularly on the gallant conduct of Captain Smith, who, finding the enemy were "annoying our right a little, got his gun" into position, and effectually "held them in check!" Both expressions are fair drawing-room phrases, to be mentioned cheerfully by ladies' lips. It is, as it were, a few flies buzzing about "our right wing," teasing and fretting "our" men. And yet, properly translated, it signifies this: that stray men of that right wing are now and then leaping with a convulsive start into the air, as a Minié bullet flies with
The reading public—instructed by journals and books of memoirs—can form for itself satisfactory pictures of the poor soldiers in hospital, lying on their pallets in rows, say at Scutari, having their pillows smoothed and cooling drinks proffered by those kind, charitable ladies, who went out to be their nurses. Has not the public viewed paintings of the scene—the sick warrior lying in comfortable convalescence, and taking with grateful languor the cool beverage from his gentle attendant? The sympathising public has also had presented to it in manly and affecting language, by Mr. Russell, some pictures of those sufferings which fall under the frightful category of gun-shot wounds. Doctor Williamson has now collected a number of cases from the late Indian mutiny, with the view of assisting his profession; take a few samples from this miscellany as among the real Horrors of War.
Private John Halliday received a gun-shot wound in the head, which carried away "a large portion of the scalp and bone," and left "a large irregular opening" about two inches in diameter, through which the brain might be seen pulsating. This injury was done by bits of the telegraph wire ingeniously cut up into slugs.—Private O' Leary was stricken by a large fragment of shell, and at first appeared not to be seriously injured. Presently he complained of headache and sickness, and a "crucial" incision was at once made. Here was discovered a fracture, and an opening left "about the size of a shilling." The dura mater at once protruded through the wound and was punctured. In a few days convulsive fits came on, with paralysis, and he died comatose. Poor Private O' Leary! On post-mortem examination, one-half of his head, internally, was discovered to be a mass of blood and "disorganised cerebral matter."—Private M' Kenzie had been hit in the same place, and had several large fragments of bone removed from him by means of an instrument known as Hey's saw; still "inflammation of the brain and its membranes" set in, and the surgeons thought of making a closer examination, when a great frag-
Another soldier was brought in with "nearly half the roof of his skull blown off by a shell," yet who held on, till the tenth day.
Often, a ball striking on the scalp splits into two pieces, so stout is the bony texture of the skull. One fragment, however, is sure to penetrate. Sometimes, it leaves a clean round hole with cracks radiating from it in all directions as in a broken pane of glass.
Often, the ball cannot be found, and has to be groped for unsuccessfully, with the probe. One wretched private had to carry it twenty-five days in his head. Another man's piece burst in his hand, and part of the lock got imbedded under his eye, too far in to be removed. Many more were afflicted by a ball making entrance just behind the ear, and passing out over the temple.
Then come the bayonet wounds, jagged, perplexing, and painful. Now has it been thrust violently through the chest and lungs and out at the back, and is as violently withdrawn with a peculiar twist, whence come suppuration, painful gasping for breath, and all manner of horrid accompaniments. Now it has impaled the intestines, producing strange complication. Now it has pierced the lower extremity of the heart, and, curious to say, the victim has lived five days. The spine comes in, too, for its share of injury. A bullet skims through the body, smashes the lower vertebra! of the column, makes its escape on the other side. The bones come away in little pieces. The new Minié ball has, we are told, the useful property of shivering the bone into numberless splinters and fragments. The conical point acts as a wedge, and the scattering of the splinters adds much to the inflammation. So the dismal catalogue runs on.
The real horrors of war are played out to the utmost on the hospital pallet when the theatrical business is all over.
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The following is a portion of the Preface I wrote for the first edition of my book:—
"Everybody knows that there is a great loss of life on our coasts annually, and nearly everybody deplores it. I am sure that if the English public equally knew how much of this loss is preventible, and the means of preventing it, no long time would elapse before means would be taken to secure this end.
"It is with the view of giving this information, so as to enable each person who reads these pages to pronounce with decision upon this question, that this pamphlet is submitted to the public.
"I have kept steadily in mind the idea of writing to an individual, as otherwise I should not have had the courage to address the public in what (from its length alone) looks like a book. As to a portion of it, I (perhaps naturally) shrink a good deal from submitting it to the public. It seemed, however, in writing it, and still seems to me, to give weight to my testimony on behalf of the working men. I apologize to any of my friends who may feel annoyed, and who would doubtless have aided me had they known of the straits to which I was brought in the earlier part of my life in London; but I ask them to think what a grand and glorious thing it will be if, by
anysacrifice, we can put a stop to the dreadful and the shameful waste of precious human life which is now going on."I thank all those gentlemen in the east, in the west, in the north, in the south, and in London, who have so greatly assisted me for some years in my inquiries, but they would not thank me if I thanked them by name. They are, however, one and all, longing to tell a Royal Commission all they have told to me—and more; for then they would speak under the protection of the law, whereas now they have to depend upon my discretion."
This sufficiently indicates my purpose. In a note appended to a cheap edition, which I was requested by many good friends of my cause in all parts of the country to allow to be published, I gratefully acknowledged the generous spirit in which my Appeal had been received, and recorded my confidence in publicity. This present abridgment, consisting of the Appeal only, without the evidence, is also printed to meet wishes that have been expressed to me with an urgency I do not feel myself at liberty to set aside.
The Appeal was published, as the date at the end of it shows, in January last. On the 4th of March I fulfilled the promise contained in it (see page 7), and moved for "a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of the Mercantile Marine of the United Kingdom." In order to give greater completeness to this pamphlet, I have appended the speech I made upon that occasion.
The following passage from the earlier part of my book forms a fit introduction to the portion herein reproduced:—
"On occasion of one of my visits to a port in the north, I was met by a gentleman who knew what my errand there was likely to be, and he said, 'Oh, Mr. Plimsoll, you should have been here yesterday; a vessel went down the river so deeply loaded, that everybody who saw her expects to hear of her being lost. She was loaded under the personal directions of her owner, and the Captain himself said to me, "Isn't it shameful, sir, to send men with families to sea in a vessel loaded like that?" Poor fellow, it is much if ever he reaches port.'
"Mr. C——B——k said, as he saw her, 'That ship will never reach her destination.'
"Mr. J——B——said, 'She did not look to be more than 12 or 14 inches out of the water.'
"Mr. J——H——, a policeman, said to his colleague, 'Dear me! how deep she is!'
"Mr. W——B——said to a friend standing by his side, 'Dear me! this vessel appears very deep in the water.'
"Mr. J——S——said, 'It strikes me she is dangerously deep.'
"The Captain called on his friend, M. J——H——, who said he (the Captain) was greatly depressed in spirits. He told him (Mr. H——), 'that he' (the Captain) 'had measured her side loaded, and she was only 20 inches out of the water.' He also asked his friend to look after his (the Captain's) wife. Mr. H——gave him some rockets in case of the worst, and then they shook hands and parted.
"J——N——and——C——, two workmen, said to each other, 'that they would not go in that ship if the owner would give them the ship.' And J——L——, another workman, said 'he'd rather go to prison than go in that ship;' and lastly, two of the wives of two of the sailors at least begged the owner 'not to send the vessel to sea so deep.'
"She was sent. The men were some of them threatened, and one at least had a promise of 10s. extra per month wages to induce him to go. As she steamed away, the police boat left her; the police had been aboard to overawe the men into going. As the police boat left her side, two of the men, deciding at the last moment that they would rather be taken to prison, hailed the police, and begged to be taken by them. The police said 'they could not interfere,' and the ship sailed. My friend was in great anxiety, and told me that if it came on to blow, the ship could not live.
"It did blow a good half gale all the day after, Sunday—the ship sailed on Friday. I was looking seaward from the promontory on which the ruins of T——Castle stand, with a heavy heart. The wind was not above force 7
"On Monday, we heard of a ship in distress having been seen; rockets had been sent up by her; it was feared she was lost. On Tuesday, a name-board of a boat was picked up, and this was all that was ever heard of her."
Now my task is nearly done.
I have shown you that what Mr. O'Dowd, the counsel of the Board of Trade, justly calls a "homicidal system," exists in our midst; that it is vain to look to underwriters for a remedy; that it is equally vain to expect it from the poor sailors themselves; that the ship-owners as a class have done all they can; and that, therefore, it is your duty, yours personally, and mine, to endeavour to apply a remedy.
I have also shown you that in extending to our fellow-men at sea the protection of the law we should not be setting a precedent, but should simply be following many precedents long established, only giving the sailors what we ashore have long enjoyed.
I have shown you the extent of the evil, examined its sources, distinguishing those requiring skilled treatment from those you can pronounce upon.
I have indicated to you the almost total change which will follow if we do our duty.
I have shown you how utterly groundless are all the objections urged against doing our simple duty; and, finally, that nearly all the ports are earnestly desirous of our assistance.
And now I'll tell you what I propose to do in the coming Session, and earnestly beg your assistance:—
I shall bring in a Bill providing for the compulsory survey of all merchant ships (the Newcastle proposal and mine are alike in effect, as you have seen), and providing also that no ship shall be allowed to proceed to sea overloaded, giving the ship-owner the choice of all existing scales, subject to approval by the Board of Trade.
Whether there will be a third clause, dealing with over-insurance, will depend upon the advice of practical men in the meantime. The sum for which a ship may fairly be assured must be a fixed sum per ton register, and the amount will necessarily vary with the ship's class, her age, rig, and material. It will be a work of time and difficulty to arrange schedules dealing with this point. I shall seek the best practical aid available, and if the thing can be accomplished on going into it, in time—well; if not, my Bill will only deal with overloading and rottenness; except this point,—the master must be made to return the number of hands he has on board on proceeding to sea, with a view to future legislation, if it is found necessary.
I shall also move an Address to the Crown, See p. 19.
With reference to the first point, I have this day heard (
Going down the Thames the crew became aware of her state, and at Deal refused to proceed on the voyage. They were landed and taken to prison, and subsequently sentenced, one and all, to a long term of imprisonment in the county gaol. Another crew was obtained somehow, and the ship went on her voyage, and while the one set of men were in gaol, all the others went to the bottom of the sea, for she was never heard of again. I can give all particulars to a Royal Commission, as well as of several other cases, all of them just as bad.
Now you who read these pages—somebody shall read them, if I have to give away the whole edition—will you help me to put these things right? If you will, whether man or woman, write me just a line to 16, St. James's Street, London, S.W., to say so, and I will then say how you best can do so. There is little reason, I fear, for thinking my correspondence will be too heavy for me, for no one seems to care for the sailors; but write, and I shall be able, I dare say, to say what is best to be done in your case.
If our sailors were as bad as bad can be, if their labour was of no use to any of us, that would surely be no reason for permitting such a "homicidal system" (Mr. O'Dowd) to continue; but they are not bad, they are as brave and manly fellows as any class ashore, and they have wives and families to deplore and suffer for their loss.
I would with all my heart and soul that I possessed the eloquence of Bright, the graphic power of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, to use in their behalf, for then you would surely be moved to action; but I have not, yet I may tell you why I feel so strongly on their behalf. If the lives of nearly a thousand of our ministers of religion, or of our lawyers, or of our doctors, or of our public men were sacrificed every year, to what a Government officer described as a "homicidal system," to pure and most culpable neglect, what would be said? All England would ring with indignation at the outrage; yet I
I don't wish to disparage the rich, but I think it may be reasonably doubted whether these qualities are so fully developed in them; for, notwithstanding that not a few of them are not unacquainted with the claims, reasonable and unreasonable, of poor relations, these qualities are not in such constant exercise; and riches seem in so many cases to smother the manliness of their possessors, and their sympathies become not so much narrowed as, so to speak, stratified—they are reserved for the sufferings of their own class, and the woes of those above them. They seldom tend downwards much, and they are far more likely to admire an act of high courage, like that of the engine-driver who saved his passengers lately from an awful collision by cool courage, than to admire the constantly exercised fortitude and the tenderness which are the daily characteristics of a British workman's life.
You may doubt this. I once should have done so myself, but I have shared their lot; I have lived with them. For months and months I lived in one of the model lodging-houses, established mainly by the efforts of Lord Shaftesbury—there is one in Fetter Lane, another in Hatton Garden, and indeed they are scattered all over London. I went there simply because I could not afford a better lodging. I have had to make 7s. 9 ½d. (3s. of which I paid for my lodging) last me a whole week, and did it. It is astonishing how little you can live on, when you divest yourself of all fanciful needs. I had plenty of good wheat bread to eat all the week, and the half of a herring for a relish (loss will do if you can't afford half, for it is a splendid fish), and good coffee to drink; and I know how much, or rather how little, roast shoulder of mutton you can get for 2d. for your Sunday's dinner. Don't suppose I went there from choice—I went of stern necessity (and this was promotion too), and I went with strong shrinking, with a sense of suffering great humiliation, regarding my being there as a thing to be carefully kept secret from all my old friends. In a word, I considered it only less degrading than spunging upon friends, or borrowing what I saw no chance of ever being able to pay.
Now what did I see there? I found the workmen considerate for each other. I found that they would go out (those who were out of employment) day after day, and patiently trudge miles and miles seeking employment, returning night after night unsuccessful and dispirited; only, however, to sally out the following morning with renewed determination. They would walk incredibly long distances, to places where they heard of a job of work; and this not for a few days, but for many, many days. And I have seen such a man sit down wearily by the fire (we had a common room for sitting and cooking everything), with a hungry, despondent look—he had not tasted food all day—and accosted by another, scarcely less poor than himself, with "Here, mate, get this into thee," handing him at the same time a piece of bread and some cold meat, and afterwards some coffee; and adding, "Better
I very soon got rid of miserable self-pity there, and came to reflect that Dr. Livingstone would probably be thankful for good wheat bread; and, if the bed was of flock and hay, and the sheets of cotton, that better men than I in the Crimea (the war was going on then) would think themselves very lucky to have as good; and then, too, I began to reflect, that, when you come to think of it, such as these men were, so were the vast majority of the working classes; that the idle and the drunken we see about public-houses are but a small minority of them, made to appear more because public-houses are all put in such places; that the great bulk are at home—for the man who has to be at work at six in the morning can't stay up at night; he is in bed early, and is as I found my fellow-inmates. Now just consider: do you not—unconsciously, it may well be—still, do you not sometimes, in thinking of working men, picture those, few though they be, you see late at night about public-houses; not exclusively, perhaps, but rather more than of the ninety and nine who are at home with their families, recruiting their physical strength for the morrow's work? Well, it was impossible to indulge self-pity in circumstances like these, and, emulous of the genuine manhood all around me, I set to work again; for what might not be done with youth and health? and simply by preparing myself rather more thoroughly for my business than had previously been considered necessary, I was soon strong enough to live more in accordance with my previous life, and am now able to speak a true word for the genuine men I left behind, simply because my dear parents had given mo greater advantages than these men had had. But I did not leave all at once. I wanted to learn the lesson well; and, though I went reluctantly, I remained voluntarily, because the kindly feelings I took with me had changed into hearty respect and admiration, and I was busy thinking, for some things I thought I knew before appeared in a new and different aspect—for instance, I knew when the explosion took place at the Warren Vale Colliery, that, as a member of the relief committee formed in Sheffield, I had found that the claims upon the funds had not been limited to the wives and children of the poor men killed; but we found that in several instances the men killed had supported widowed mothers, and in others younger brothers and sisters, who had with themselves been deprived of fathers by some preceding accident. And, again, at the Lund Hill explosion this was the case too—nearly one-third of the men killed, as the respective committees can testify, were thus supporting relations others than wife or child.
Have you reflected what this is? Rich men, even comfortably-to-do men, do this, I don't doubt. But consider the difference; in one case it is simply signing a cheque, and mayhap leaving rather less behind him; in the other, it is perhaps having rather less to spend on what, after all, perhaps is fore
I also thought a little more of the subscriptions of the men I had generally managed at the brewery where I was employed before I came to London to seek my fortune. And the more I thought, the more I wondered at the readiness with which men earning 16s. per week, and a cottage, and having a wife, and, in some cases, five and seven children, would spare 1s. each to help a dead comrade's widow, or 6d. to help a fellow-workman to defray the extra expense of a funeral in his family. Fancy what a sum 1s. is in such circumstances!
I thought, too, of the wonderful courage—more: of the real and wonderful heroism of the working men in circumstances of peril—deadly peril—at Edmund's Main Colliery explosion, when nearly two hundred men perished. After the first explosion, and a second was expected every moment, there was some doubt whether all in the pit were killed. "Who volunteers to go down to search?" is asked. Instantly, and without any knowledge apparently that the act was out of the common way, three times the number of men wanted stepped forward and went down. They never came up again alive, poor fellows, for a second explosion came, and the brave and gallant men, though their faces and hands wore black, vindicated their courage with their lives.
Again, when the last explosion took place at the Oaks Colliery, and it was thought some might be living below, when my dear friend, Parkin Jeffcock, held up his hand, and said, "Well, lads, who goes down With me?" (that's the place of an English gentleman), more than double the number he wanted quickly stepped out of the crowd. God help me, I fear I should not have the like courage in like circumstances, for a second explosion was so imminent that, having selected his men, the rest were ordered to fall back from the pit's mouth, lest they should be blown into the air. You know they never came up again. Poor fellows! Poor Jeffcock! it was a death worthy of envy, almost as much as Cobden's life was.
Who forgets Joe Rodgers, the plain seaman, who, with a thin cord made fast to his body, sprang from the deck of the Royal Charter, on the chance that he might be dashed on the shore with life enough to establish the line which was stretched from ship to shore, and which saved nearly forty lives? or the sailor who, when the Sailors' Home, which the late Prince Albert assisted to build in Liverpool, was ablaze, and the ladders were all too short to reach the highest floor, where the sailors were shut up by the fire, took one ladder, with the bottom rung resting on the bend of his right arm, and, pushing it up before him, mounted to the top of another, and thus, at the extreme peril of his own life (for had the imprisoned sailors not come down one at once all would have been killed), saved the lives of five men?
Can we forget the common soldiers, too, who, when the Birkenhead was lost, went down to death, shoulder to shoulder, having to the last kept their ranks to form a pathway of safety for the women and children?
Remember the Sarah Sands, too. Death seems robbed of all its horror when it is accompanied by glories like these. And now, tell me if I have not reason when I say that I absolutely glory in the working men, and aspire no higher than to merit equal respect with them. Yes, before I left my friends—for such we became at the model lodging-house—I had learned to feel as well as to know that—
and had also become more fully aware than I was before, how great and how glorious a thing it is to be born an Englishman. And yet these are the men we leave, shamefully leave, to perish by the dozen, by the score, without an effort to save them—allow them to perish from causes which could be remedied before the winter of
Do you want to know more about the sort of men who thus are cut off in their full manhood? Do you want to know how their loss is felt? Come with me a few minutes, and I'll show you. The initials are all strictly correct, both those indicating names and also those giving addresses, and I can produce all the people. In this house, No. 9, L——11 Street, lives Mrs. A——r R——e. Look at her; she is not more than two or three-and-twenty, and those two little ones are hers. She has a mangle you see. It was subscribed for by her poor neighbours—the poor are very kind to each other. That poor little fellow has hurt his foot, and looks wonderingly at the tearful face of his young mother. She had a loving husband but very lately; but the owner of the ship, the S——n, on which he served, was a very needy man, who had insured her for nearly £3,000 more than she had cost him; so, if she sank, he would gain all this. Well, one voyage she was loaded under the owner's personal superintendence; she was loaded so deeply that the dock-master pointed her out to a friend as she left the dock, and said emphatically, "That ship will never reach her destination." She never did, but was lost with all hands, twenty men and boys. A——R——complained to her before she sailed, that the ship was "so deep loaded." She tried to get to the sands to see the ship off with Mrs. S——r, whoso husband also was on board. They never saw their husbands again.
In this most evil-smelling room E——Q——, C——Street, you may see in the corner two poor women in one bed, stricken with fever (one died two days after I saw them), mother and daughter. The husband of the daughter, who maintained them both, had been lost at sea a little while before—with a ship so loaded that when Mr. B——1, a Custom-House officer, who had to go on board for some reason as she was lying in the river, on asking whereabouts the ship was, was told, "She's yonder; you can easily find her; she's nearly over t' head in water." Mr. B——I told me, "I asked no questions, but stepped on board. This description was quite sufficient."
Mrs. R——s, 14, H——n Place, told me her young brother was an orphan with herself. She and her sister had brought him up until she was married. Then her husband was kind to him, and apprenticed him to the sea. He had passed as second mate in a sailing ship; but (he was a fine young fellow : I
S——ship, leaking badly, but was assured on signing that she was to be repaired before loading. The ship was not repaired, and was loaded, as he told his sister-mother, "like a sand-barge." Was urged by his sister, and also her husband, not to go. His sister again urged him, as he passed her bedroom door in the morning, not to go. He promised he wouldn't, and went to the ship to get the wages due to him. Was refused payment unless he went; was over-persuaded, and threatened, and called a coward, which greatly excited him. He went; and two days afterwards the ship went down.
Her husband, Mr. R——s, also told me that he and his wife "had a bit crack," and decided to do all they could to "persuade Johnnie not to go." The young man was about twenty-two.
Mr. J——H——1 told me that the captain was his friend, and the captain was very "down-hearted about the way she was loaded" (mind, she was loaded under the owner's personal supervision). The captain asked him (Mr. A——) to see his wife off by train after the ship had sailed. She, poor soul! had travelled to that port to see him off. Captain said to him, "I doubt I'll never see her more!" and burst out crying. Poor fellow! he never did see her more.
Now come with me to 36, C——Street, and see Mrs. J——s R——e. She is a young woman of superior intelligence, and has a trustable face—very. She may be about twenty-seven. She lost her husband in the same ship. He was thirty years of age, and, to use her own words, "such a happy creature, full of his jokes." He was engaged as second engineer at £110s. and board. "After his ship was loaded he was a changed man, he got his tea without saying a word, and then sat looking into the fire in a deep study like. I asked him what hailed him, and he said, more to himself than me, 'She's such a beast!' I thought he meant the men's place was dirty, as he had complained before that there was nowhere for the men to wash. He liked to be clean, my husband, and always had a good wash when he came home from the workshop, when he worked ashore. So I said, 'Will you let me come aboard to clean it for ye?' and he said, still looking at the fire, 'It isn't that.' Well, he hadn't signed, only agreed, so I said, 'Don't sign, Jim;' and he said he wouldn't, and went and told the engineer he shouldn't go. The engineer 'spoke so kindly to him,' and offered him 10s. a month more. He'd had no work for a long time, and the money was tempting," she said, "so he signed. When he told me, I said, 'Oh! Jim, you won't go, will you?' He said, 'Why, hinnie, hinnie, they'll put me in gaol if I don't.' I said, 'Never mind, ye can come home after that.' 'But,' said he, 'they'll call me a coward, and ye wouldn't like to hear me called that.'"
The poor woman was crying very bitterly, so I said gently, "I hope you won't think I'm asking all these questions from idle curiosity;" and I shall never forget her quick disclaimer, for she saw that I was troubled with her—
"On no, sir, I am glad to answer you; for so many homes might be spared being made desolate if it was only looked into."
I ascertained that she is now "getting a bit winning for a livelihood," as my informant phrased it (of course I was not so rude as to ask her that), by sewing for a ready-made clothes shopkeeper. She was in a small garret,
I saw also Mrs. W——ks, of 78, B——d Street, who had lost her son, Henry W——ks, aged twenty-two. She too cried bitterly as she spoke with such love and pride of her son, and of the grief of his father, who was sixty years of age. Her son was taken on as stoker, and worked in the ship some days before she was ready for sea. He didn't want to go then, when he saw how she was loaded; but they refused to pay him the money he had earned unless he went; and he too was lost with all the others.
Just one more specimen of the good, true, and brave men we sacrifice by our most cruel and manslaughtering neglect, and then I will go on to the next part of my subject.
This time I went to 17, D——h Street, and called upon old J——n P——r, and after apologizing for intruding upon his grief, I asked him if he had any objection to telling me whether his son had had any misgivings about the ship before he went. He said, "Yes. I went to see the ship myself, and I was horrified to see the way she was loaded. She looked like a floating wreck; and I tried all I could to persuade him not to go; but he'd been doing nothing for a long time, and he didn't like being a burden on me. He'd a fine 'sperrit,' sir, had my son," said the poor old man.
Here a young woman I had not observed (she was in a corner, with her face to the wall) broke out into loud sobs, and said, "He was the best of us all, sir—the best in the whole family. He was as fair as a flower, vah-y canny-looking."
Oh! my God! my God! what can I say, what can I write, to make the people take thought on this terrible wrong?
I tell you, you who read these lines, if you are a man, you deserve to perish suddenly, lacking sympathy and succour in your hour of utmost need, and leaving your nearest and dearest only the cold charity of the world to depend upon—for this is how sailors die—if you don't help. If you are a wife, you deserve that your husband should be taken from you without warning, and that to the anguish of bereavement should be added the material miseries of hunger and destitution—for this is how sailors' wives suffer—if you do not help. If you are a father, descending it may be into the vale of years, with sons strong and brave, the pride and support of your age, you deserve that they should suddenly perish with no hand to help them, leaving your remaining years uncheered by one filial greeting—for so the fathers of sailors are bereaved—if you do not help. If you are a mother, you deserve that your son should be taken from you in the pride of his young manhood, if you don't help to stop this homicidal, this manslaughtering, this widow-and-orphan manufacturing system.
Fellow Christians, have you nothing to say to this? Do you think that there are no religious sailors—no followers of our common Lord and Saviour
Don't you recollect the miner at the Hartley accident who slid down the guide-rods, knowing he could not get up again for days it might be, that he might pray with and for his companions who were below the broken engine-beam, and who could never more see the light?
Do you forget the loving husband who in that horrible pit, face to face with death, scratched with his knife on a breakfast can a message of love to his wife Sarah?
I have been aboard a ship when the sailors were holding a service in the forecastle, a single lamp swinging from the deck beam, and wild rough weather without, making you hold on to a pillar to stand, and this was the order of it. They commenced by singing Toplady's beautiful hymn, which solaced good Prince Albert when he lay on his all-too-early death-bed—
Then followed the reading of a chapter and prayer. Then this hymn—
Then the big, bluff captain, with the Union Jack for cover, and a hogshead on end for a reading-desk, gave a short, earnest sermon from—"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me;" and then they concluded with the hymn—
and I well remember their singing the verse—
and wondering how it was that these brave men were so entirely friendless—how it was that they alone of British subjects should have been abandoned to the tender mercies of unchecked irresponsibility—of competition run mad.
Have you no word to say when you are shown, on evidence you cannot doubt, that your fellow Christians are sent down to death, and their wives made widows, their children fatherless, when you could prevent it by the simple expression of your will? Oh! shame, shame! how will you answer to the Master for it, when you and they stand at length before Him?
Fellow Loyalists,—You who are thankful for the inestimable blessings of a settled government, and who are unwilling that this glorious England of ours should incur the tremendous loss of dignity which would ensue from having the highest person in the nation subjected to all the abuse which malignity
Working men, is it nothing to you that your fellow-workmen, fathers of families, men to whom life is as dear as it is to yourselves, men who have committed no fault, should thus shamefully be neglected? should thus be drowned by the dozen and the score to make a few bad men richer?—and that their needless deaths should not elicit an inquiry into the cause of it? I hate to appeal to class feelings or prejudices, but class jealousy can only be allayed by justice, not by ignoring murderous wrong; and I ask, seriously and sadly, can any one doubt but that, if these brave men had been pigs or sheep, the Legislature had long since been compelled by powerful advocates to stop such losses? Pigs and sheep are property, and property is well represented in Parliament; but these—why, they are only our poor brothers, and no one speaks for them.
You who are members of societies can help best by calling upon your secretaries to organize a public meeting or demonstration in favour of the passing of the Merchant Shipping Survey Bill this Session. Do this, if you are men.
I do not wish to represent Parliament as indifferent to the interests of working men. On the contrary, it is impossible to contemplate the fiscal legislation of the past twenty years without gratefully acknowledging on their behalf its unselfish, nay, more, its self-denying character; but, when no pressing demand is made for the remedy of social wrong, its removal is postponed to those matters which are pressed. Parliament will act readily enough if people out of doors make it a prominent question; and so thoroughly am I satisfied on this point, that I begin to doubt whether I was right in trying to get into Parliament with the object of getting this done. It seems to me at least doubtful whether I should not have done better to have endeavoured to rouse people out of doors to the urgency of the matter. At any rate, on this I have decided, that if, during the coming Session, I again fail to obtain at least a Royal Commission to inquire into the subject, I will restore to my constituents the high trust they confided to me, and will then, as God may help me, and with such fellow-workers as I may find, go from town to town, and tell the story of the sailors' wrongs. For, if the working men of Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester only demand justice for these poor men, the thing is done. The working men of Derby have done their part, for when, moved by the sailors' wrongs, I asked them to send me to Parliament to seek for justice, they sent me by over 2,000 majority.
Gentlemen of the Press,—Your great power and influence have always been exercised on behalf of the oppressed. Nor has their inability to even thank you stayed the generous exercise of your power, else one might despair of these men, for they are politically perfectly helpless; they can neither threaten a ministry nor offer a contingent to the opposition; they are not even
Help them, then, I pray you, and you too shall be helped by the recollection of your brotherly aid when that hour comes when you will need the help of Him that sticketh closer than a brother. Consider how not only are the sailors' lives sacrificed, not only are many, very many of their wives made widows, but what a clouded life all their wives lead from well-grounded and constant apprehension, which, deeply depressing at all times, knows no other variation than the quick agony into which those apprehensions are aroused whenever the wind rises oven to a moderate gale.
Whoever you are who read this, help the poor sailors, for the love of God. If you are a man of influence, call a meeting and confer on this Appeal; if you are not, and will write to mo, I will try to show you how to help.
If you refuse—but this I cannot think—but if you refuse or neglect to use your influence, before another year has run its course at least five hundred—five hundred men!—now in life, will strew the bottom of the sea with their dead, unburied, unresting bodies, and desolation and woe will have entered many and many a now happy home; but if you do render your help, we can secure such life-preserving activity in precautionary measures that the sailor will have no fear; and then the storms of winter may come, but with good tight ships under them, and sound gear to their hands, their own strong arms and stout hearts can do the rest; and as after a night of storm and tempest, which but for your fraternal care would have overwhelmed them in death and sent bereavement and anguish into their humble homes, they reach their desired haven, weary and worn it may be, but still safe—chilled to the marrow, but still alive—the blessings of those who are ready to perish shall be yours: nor shall there be lacking to you those richer blessings promised by the Great Father of us all, to those who visit the widow and fatherless, for that, to the high and the noble and the sacred duty of visiting them in their affliction, you have preferred the higher, the nobler, and the yet more sacred duty of saving women and children from so sad a fate.
Delivered in the House of Commons, March 4, 1873
By Samuel Plimsoll,
In Moving for a Royal Commission to Inquire into the Condition of the Mercantile Marine of the United Kingdom.
Also a Notice of a Speech Delivered at Leeds, Sunday,
March 16.
If I were as competent to speak as I am to work for and to sympathize with the maritime population of this country, I should make a speech which would not be unworthy even of this House; unfortunately, however, I am not, and am even less able to speak in this presence than to assemblies in other places.
I trust, therefore, Sir, that the House will accord to me its indulgence whilst I endeavour to lay before it a few facts, out of many, upon which I shall found a motion for an Address to the Crown, even though my statement of facts and arguments should not be as clear as other statements to which it is accustomed to listen.
I will do my best to avoid, on the one hand, leaving my statements unsupported, and, on the other hand, overlaying my subject with a redundancy of proof.
Before I proceed, one observation further. I wish to guard myself against being understood, in any strictures or remarks which I may use, as applying them to the whole of the ship-owners of this kingdom—nothing can be further from my intention than that. I simply wish to describe practices which prevail amongst a part, and, as I believe, but a small part, of those ship-owners.
Sir, considering the amount of general knowledge which prevails now on this important subject, I shall not consider it necessary to arrange my subject into as many divisions as a full treatment of it would require, and then support each by appropriate proof: I shall rest my case upon a general statement of the law as it affects this matter—supported by quotations from letters.
My statement is that the law will not prevent mo nor any one else from building a ship of any dimensions which fancy or caprice may dictate.
That the law will not prevent me from using timber altogether insufficient in scantling and unsuitable in quality in building that ship.
That the law will not prevent me from building an iron ship in any way I please, and of so-called steel plates of such a quality that a strong man with
That the law will not prevent me, having selected a design for a flush-deck iron steamer, and having had the ship so constructed, from building upon her, after she is launched, a poop, 120 feet long, then adding a top-gallant forecastle 50 feet long, then uniting the two roofs and calling it a hurricane-deck, and then putting upon the latter donkey-engines, steam-cranes, and other gear, in such a way as to provoke the strongest representations that I had simply built one ship upon another, and that the whole must certainly founder the first time she encounters half a gale of wind and a beam sea.
That the law will not prevent me, urged by competition, from cutting a vessel in two, adding 50 or 70 or any other number of feet to her length amidships, without any diagonal bracing, any doubling of plates, any additional bulkheads, or any of those appliances which a competent naval architect would think necessary.
That the law will not prevent me from keeping my ship at sea in a state of unrepair, fraught with the highest peril to those on board—keeping her at sea until she is 70, 80, 90, 100, or even more years old—from keeping her at sea in fact when she is so utterly rotten that if she takes the ground or touches a rock she must inevitably go to pieces with quick and sudden destruction.
That the law will not interfere to prevent my loading a ship, no matter of what class or kind, with an amount of cargo that shall sink her deck within a couple of feet of the water, and sending her to sea in a condition which not merely excites the forebodings of all on board, but gives rise to many condemnatory remarks on the part of those who see her set forth.
That the law will not interfere to prevent me, having built steamers for what is called canal and general cargo traffic, from sending them across the Atlantic and loading them with grain in bulk, a most dangerous cargo, and requiring ships of extraordinary tightness and strength to carry in safety; because, should there be the slightest leakage, the grain absorbs the moisture and swells, and the bursting force thus accumulated beneath the superincumbent weight of the cargo may be easily judged of when we consider the familiar illustration that is afforded in the fact, that, if you lay a flag-stone upon a stool of crocuses or snowdrops in the spring, the vital forces which the spring sets in operation will lift the stone so as to enable them to get forth.
That the law will not prevent me from so overtasking the engine-power of my vessel as to load from 17 to 19 tons cargo per horse-power, a fair load per horse-power not being more than from 12 to 13 tons; and so overtasking the human power on board as to sail a steam-vessel of over 2,000 tons from a foreign port for England with only eight deck-hands on board, three only of whom were able seamen and competent to understand the orders which were given to them.
And, lastly, that the law provides for the measurement of ships in such a way as distinctly to encourage the building of ships of an unsafe character, inasmuch as, if you cover your ship from end to end with a hurricane-deck, which will enable the vessel to throw off the seas, you make her liable to considerably increased charges—as tonnages, dues, &c.; which additional charges
If then, Sir, all this is true, and the law does not interfere to prevent practices like these, the state of things which might be anticipated, even without experience of their effects, would be ample reason why an inquiry should be instituted, with a view to the establishment of a better system.
But, Sir, we are not left to à priori reasoning on this subject. We have a great mass of evidence of the saddest and most melancholy character to show that the results which might have been anticipated have followed.
The statements which occur with such distressing frequency in the Board of Trade Returns, and the statements which have been so repeatedly made in the Magazine of the Lifeboat Institution, and those which are repeated on every hand by papers published in our seaport towns, constitute what I may call general proof in support of my statement.
I should, however, I think, make a mistake if I did not submit to the House one or two special instances which have come to my knowledge even within the past few days.
This letter reached me February 27th:—
"I was brought up at a seaport town, and was twelve years in a shipbuilding and repairing yard; six years of the time I acted as outside superintendent, so that I had abundant opportunity of noticing the sort of 'coffins' in which sailors are often sent to sea.——being a depot for the North, there are two important trades carried on, viz., coal and wood. The coal, at least until three years ago (when I left), was principally carried on by small merchants. They employed schooners, brigantines, and brigs to carry coal from the Scotch and English ports; very few of these vessels were classed, and the majority were equipped in the most miserable way. One merchant whom I could name lost two or three vessels every year, and, generally, all hands with the vessels. He has often been known to send his vessels to sea without proper ground-gear, in order that the captains would have to beat a passage, and not take an intermediate port. I have seen dozens of such vessels that could not be properly caulked, the planks being so rotten that pieces of wood had to be driven in the seams; and if a piece of plank was taken out, no timbers or frames could be found to fasten it to, a plate of iron having to be laid on the ceiling or inside skin for this purpose. Then, again, the running gear as a rule was perfectly rotten—rotten masts, spars, and sails, and miserable cabins and forecastles: these vessels would make a passage across Channel in the middle of winter, with, perhaps, eighteen inches of side above water. The timber ships are employed running to North America; many of these vessels have no character or class, and their hulls are just as bad as the coal schooners. The timber ships have generally to bring home heavy deck loads, and you are well aware of the number of such vessels that are lost annually.——being a very handy place for wind-bound and distressed vessels, I had many chances of seeing vessels which had put into the port leaky, carrying all sorts of cargoes—salt, pig-iron, rails, &c. These cargoes are very severe on old ships; often the crews
"I may add that I have no interest, at least pecuniarily, in this matter now, as I am in quite a different trade; but I know that you are right, although you may encounter a great deal of opposition. I am sure that my old master, who is still a ship-builder and repairer, would give you you every information he could in a private way. I have written this letter on the impulse of the moment, so that I beg you will excuse any irregularities. If you wish to make a strong case, you have only to visit the seaports to find out for yourself, as I am sure there is an abundance of evidence."
Then the next letter I would submit to the House is as follows :—"The British steamer________, 305 tons gross, 193 tons net, 35 horse-power, launched P.M. (Sunday) went ashore and was broken up. Of the crew (eleven in number) three only were saved. When the captain's body came ashore it had two wounds near the heart, which, being examined by a surgeon, led to the conclusion that he had committed suicide in his cabin before the completion of the wreck."
Lloyd's agent at_________, writes, under date
I will now read part of another letter: "A few months ago a crew refused to go to sea, alleging the unseaworthiness of the ship as their reason—they were sentenced to three months' imprisonment; another crew was obtained, and the ship left, and went as far as Milford, when the second crew refused to go any further; a survey was ordered, and the ship condemned. Of course the first crew was then released, but, I presume, no compensation was given them for their unjust imprisonment, and I am told that they lost their clothes,
ad nauseam; should it, however, be in my power in any way to help in putting a stop to the fearful state of things now existing, I shall only be too glad to do so."
Then the next letter is: "My dear Sir—You have made a move in the cause of humanity for which you deserve immortal credit. I have not seen your book, but I read a review of it in the Times with the deepest interest. Cases have occurred where delinquents have been executed for murder who deserved the gallows less than the monied barbarians who have sent overladen ships to sea. I send you enclosed an illustration of the justice of my statement. But to judge accurately of the disgraceful case, you shall read the evidence on the inquiry. It was proved that the decks were so laden with bales of cotton that the crew had to stand and walk on the top of them so as to manage the ship, and Mr.——, a ship-owner, examined for the defence, swore that the higher the bales were piled the more it conduced to safety, as if the ship went down the crew and passengers would have a better chance of escaping."
The next letter, which I will read a portion of, describes a case which in magnitude is of frequent and in character of every-day occurrence:—
"Scarcely a second day passes but the Police Court here encounters cases of 'refusing to proceed to sea.' Many occur through the vice of local crimps, but as many perhaps result from the resolve of seamen not to be hastened to a sure and certain death in rotten or overladen ships. Some three weeks since some men were charged with 'refusing to proceed;' a local shipbuilder and owner surveyed, no doubt for the purpose of conviction, and swore the ship was fit for sea. The men were all but sentenced, but justice happened to halt; a remand occurred; a qualified person surveyed immediately; swore the vessel was not fit for sea, and, lo! the men escaped the punishment which perjury or incompetence, perhaps both, would have inflicted upon them, and probably, in the then state of the weather, they escaped the inevitable doom so often forced upon seamen. The other fact is this—a local iron firm of brothers were engaged to remove and repair the shaft of a large steamer; it had been bent, and cracked, and was totally unfit for use. Being removed and examined, nothing could be done but cutting off the injured part, but the authorities of the ship would not hear of it; it was patched up, but the wound was dangerous as ever. These brothers remarked that it was a scandal to take a ship to sea with such a shaft—'they would not go to sea in her for all the world.' She was bound for America, and they remarked 'if she does get there she will never return.' She did get there, but never returned, and her history was obliterated in the dark and secret sea. No inquiry followed! no record of her fate! no sympathy! her crew, I believe, were erased from life as if they had never lived, but the widow and the orphan's moans were heard in Heaven, where these Pharisees will some day be called to judgment! As to evidence, these gentlemen, the officers of Customs, pilots, and men who stow the coal and iron cargoes, could give invaluable and conclusive testimony.
That extract, Sir, will complete my statement of the case. It will be seen by the House, that, as now stated by me, I have limited myself to extracts from official documents and eases which have come to my knowledge within the last few days.
I have done this advisedly, for the purpose of avoiding the introduction of controversial matter.
I will now ask the House to consider with me for a moment the extent of the mischief which has resulted from the state of things which I have endeavoured to describe.
I have endeavoured to get at the total loss of life recorded in the Wreck Register of the Board of Trade, but the totals are so distributed as to make this very difficult, and I am not even now sure that I have the whole; at any rate I am able to assure the House that the total annual loss for the following four years is not less than I now give the figures for:—
or 2,754 per annum on the average.
I will next ask the House to consider with me for a moment the king of men that are thus drowned in such appalling numbers; and will, for this purpose, confine myself to entries which I find in the Blue Books issued by the Board of Trade-of opinions not uttered by Eglishmen, but by the agents of foreign goverments, who have been struck with admiration at the heroism and self-denial and humane feeling of our seamen at various times.
The Blue Books of each year are crowded with instances of the same character as those of which I will read to the House a very few.
In the Blue Book for the year 1861, at page 81, it will be found that 12 Englishmen, whose names are given, were rewarded by the French government each with a silver medal, for rescuing, at great risk, the crew of the French galleot L Anemone, of Nantes.
The same page records that a gold medal was given to an Englishman for resucing, with much risk, the survivor of the ship Courier, of Dieppe.
The very next entry is that of the master of the Perthshire Lassie, who was rewarded with a gold medal for rescuing, with much difficulty, the crew of a French ship.
Further down we find that an Englishman was rewarded with a binocular glass for rscuing the crew of a French ship, L' Aimable Virginie, and treating them with much kindness for thirteen days.
In the same page fourteen Englishmen were each rewarded by the French Goverment with a siver medal for attempting, at the risk of their lives, to rescue the crew of the French ship Trois SŒurs.
These instances might be quoted ad infinitum.
In the Wreck Register of
I should weary the House if I were merely to attempt to read a tithe of these cases; to read them in the Blue Books is deeply interesting, and makes us very proud of our countrymen; but, although I will not trouble the House with any more special instances, I wish to guard against these being supposed to be at all singular, by stating that in the year
Such instances occur in—
In many of these instances, of course, very considerable numbers of men were included in the rewards and commendation of foreign governments, and we may fairly assume that the cases of courage and self-devotion exhibited are vastly more numerous than those which were brought to the notice of the authorities and followed by reward.
Does not the reading of these testimonies to the gallantry and self-devotion of our fellow-countrymen at sea, cause all our hearts to beat high with pride that the fame of England is thus upheld in the eyes of other nations? Brave, tender-hearted, courageous, we yet suffer them to be drowned by the dozen and score at once, or to suffer torments worse than death, to add to the ill-gotten gains of a few bad men.
Now, Sir, let us see who they are who mourn the loss of these men.
"I trust that the disappointment you have encountered in the outset of your gallant undertaking will in nowise deter you from what you propose doing. Only be bold enough and consistent, and you will find supporters everywhere. How little true patriotism there is—the base greed of gain swallows up every honourable thought and Christian principle. If I were a man I would uphold the cause publicly. Ah! it makes my heart burn to think that English lads by scores, like my own son, are sent out to perish in rotten tubs, while the 'honest' ship-owner sits complacently in his Sunday pew and lays by his guineas with untroubled conscience. So, onward I say for the sake of England's name, which is growing fast a by-word among nations.
Take another case:—
"It is with feelings of deep deep gratitude that I address you, and trust you will pardon my seeming intrusion. I am simply doing what a vast number of widows and fatherless would endorse. Thank you for taking the part of the sailors, to whom the nation at large owe so much and care for so little. Two years ago I lost my dear husband; he left me to join a splendid steamer called the________, and there were on that same vessel men of tender loving hearts, and upright minds—thirty-seven of the men went into eternity. God only knows how bitter it is to part from those dear as life itself, waiting to hear the old step again, waiting to see the happy manly face, and to hear the voice once more, but waiting in vain, for they have had the bright eyes closed in death, not by loving hands at home, but amid the angry billows, far from those who would gladly have saved them from such a cruel end.
"I have not read your book, but have heard about it; it would only intensify a sorrow bitter enough at times. I can only say I know the truth and justice of the cause you set forth, and hope it will meet with the sympathy it demands. One could more fully submit to the loss of friends when all has been done for them, when no fault of carelessness is left to haunt the soul after; but England has permitted men to go to sea in rotten vessels. What is the consequence? Every winter numbers of brave strong men find a watery grave, and all that is left for the poor widows and children is a little sympathy, unless it be in the case of a Captain or Northfleet—then it goes far enough to help as well as pity. How do we act on shore when danger or disease overtakes us? We take every precaution, use the means, then leave the rest to God. But people are in the habit of speaking as if all the loss of life at sea ought to be expected. We know that God holds the waters in the hollow of His hands. He raiseth the stormy wind; but are we to charge Him with what man does? I do not, and how much pain it would save the childless mother, the widow and fatherless, did they but know that all care had been taken of the loved and lost. Your work cannot recall those who are gone, cannot bring back my husband and home, but there are others now on the deep who will thank you for spared lives, and many a tender woman will unite with me in thanking you. May God grant that the interest now awakened may not subside as it has before! For two years I have prayed that some one would come forth, and I have faith to believe that not only something may be done, but all that will ensure the safety of those who leave homo and loved ones to ply the great deep. If they are taken, then we as a nation could say the Lord hath taken.
"Pardon my writing. God knows what I feel; may He bless and help you in your work is the prayer of
Sir, I ask this House to put a stop to this wanton and wicked waste of precious human life, and I gather that that is their will.
I will now proceed to consider the steps necessary to give effect to that will.
We must first—and I trust that will be some time before we sleep—appoint a Commission which shall make a thorough and searching inquiry into the whole subject, including—
I trust her Majesty's Government will see that the Commission consists of the very best men that can be found for the purpose, and that it is sufficiently numerous, after prosecuting the inquiry, so far as it can be prosecuted with advantage in London, to divide itself into two sections, one of which might take the East Coast and Scotland, and the other the West Coast and Ireland, so as to lose as little time as possible in completing their investigations.
In the meantime I trust this House will pass a Bill dealing with the most obvious and easily-remediable sources of disaster, which Bill can give place to the more perfect and thoroughly-considered measure which we may anticipate as the result of their Report.
We may, also, in the meantime, avail ourselves of the ample information possessed by the Board of Trade, to compile a series of Tables or Returns which shall greatly aid the Commission when they come to frame the recommendations which they will lay before the House.
I find that the Board of Trade has the most ample records, and the fullest details on this subject—details sufficiently extensive and exhaustive, with the aid of such particulars as we may easily obtain from the Register of British and Foreign Ships, to compile the Returns, which I will now suggest to the House should be ordered forthwith. The Returns I suggest are—
And at the end of this list the country will see what they will see.
The records of the Board of Trade are amply sufficient to furnish the whole of this information—they are like the still waters of Bethesda's pool, full of latent capability of blessing, and like them only waiting to be troubled by the spirit of inquiry, to give forth healing and life. And, Sir, I am satisfied that when the Commission, which I trust this House will appoint this evening, has completed its work and reported thereon, and this House has adopted such measures, in consequence, as the exigencies of the case may require, so great a change will ensue, that, whereas our fellow-subjects at sea have hitherto pursued their most beneficent calling in constant and imminent peril of their lives, they shall in the future pursue that calling with as much as, or even greater safety than, that in which we travel by railway ashore; and as to the homes of those who are dependent upon them, of those they love, so great will be the change, that, whereas in the past their homes have been like those of the Egyptians on that dread night when the angel of death went from house to house throughout all the land taking his toll of dead, they shall in the future be like the homes of the Israelites on that same night, which, when the angel of death sought to enter, he could not, because they bore upon them the symbol of His loving and protecting care.
I move that an humble Address be presented to her Majesty, praying that she will be pleased to issue a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of, and certain practices connected with, the Mercantile Marine of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Plimsoll, M.P., happening to be in Leeds on the 16th, and accidentally observing on the walls the announcement that a sermon would be delivered in the amphitheatre by a local minister, attended the gathering, and at the close was invited to speak. After the subsidence of the ringing cheers which greeted him on stepping to the front of the stage,
Mr. Plimsoll said if it was right to lift from a pit a horse or an ass which had fallen into it on the Sabbath day, he thought it was also right that, although it was the Sabbath day, he should take the opportunity of saying a word or two on the subject which he took for granted had brought the audience together that afternoon. An hour and a half before he was not at all aware of the meeting. Late last night he reached Leeds to fulfil an engagement upon the subject he supposed they had then in their minds, and as he went to Woodhouse Lane Cemetery that afternoon to visit the grave of a friend who was laid there seven-and-twenty years ago, he saw "Rotten Ships!" "Rotten Ships!" "Rotten Ships!" staring at him upon the walls, so he thought he would turn in and hear what was to be said upon that subject, and take part, if possible, in the meeting. That was the secret of his presence among them. He came the previous night, and intended returning at half-past ten on Monday morning; but he thought he should like to say a word or two to the people of Leeds before he went away, seeing that they were assembled to discuss a subject in which he took so much interest, and seeing also that some time ago he was prevented from coming to Leeds when he should have been glad to have done so. He wanted the Leeds people to help the London people to make it impossible for the Government to let this Session of Parliament go by without legislating on behalf of our sailors. Unless a very strong public effort was made through the length and breadth of the land, Parliament would separate without doing anything but appoint a Commission. A Commission was a good thing, and he hoped its work would be well done; but the country could not afford to wait three years longer. Some measures must be taken in the meantime to secure the safety of our sailors. Surely they need not wait for a Commission to say that a ship that needed repair or that was overloaded should not put to sea? Every day, and
Printed by Virtue and Co., City Road, London.
Something like an apology is necessary for the views that will be advanced in the present lecture. Yet not an apology, for truth requires no apology. Nevertheless, the doctrine to be advanced is so utterly subversive of a point of popular creed, generally regarded as an essential feature of divine truth, that the course of argument may appear to savour of infidel tendencies, and therefore constrains deference so far to worthy feeling, as to assure the reader that the argument is prompted by no speculative wantonness, nor delight in tampering with settled and sacred things. The real and only reason for doing what is about to be done, is a conviction, most earnest and profound, that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is an untrue doctrine, both philosophically and Scripturally considered, and effectually prevents the believer of it from truly apprehending the teaching of Christ.
The universal theory of the human constitution is, that in his proper essential nature, man is a "spiritual," immaterial, and immortal being, tabernacling in a material body composed of organs necessary for the manifestation of his invisible and indestructible "self" in this external and material world, but in no way beholden to that body for existence or identity. The organs composing the body are not regarded as any part of man's being; they are looked upon as things which the man uses as a mechanic employs his tools—the external agencies by which the behests of "the inner man" are carried out. All bodily functions are referred to the same category of material agency, while mental qualities—such as reason, sentiment, disposition; &c.—are set down as the attribute of the spiritual "essence" which is supposed to constitute himself, and to reside mysteriously in some part of the body's substance. The body is, of course, admitted to have had a material derivation "from the dust of the ground," but the "essence" is believed to have come from God himself—to be, in fact, a part of the Deity—a spark, or particle, scintillated from the Divine centre, having intelligent faculty and existence altogether independently of the substantial organism with which it is associated. In accordance with this view, death is looked upon as an accident which does not affect a man's being. It simply demolishes the material organism, and liberates the deathless, intangible man from the bondage of this "mortal coil" which, having "shuffled off," he wings his way to spiritual regions, there to undergo eternal happiness or misery, according to "deeds done in the body."
Those who hold this belief will not readily apprehend the idea which lurks behind the proposition of the lecture. Admitting the mortality of human nature in a certain general sense, they may be disposed to regard it as a truism, without perceiving that it expresses the opposite of their most cherished unbelief. Elaborated a little for the sake of explicitness, the proposition would stand as follows:—
in every sense. He is a mortal creature of organized substance, energised and sustained in being by power emanating from God, which he shares in common with every living thing under
and his existence meanwhile is obliterated in the grave.
This is the idea expressed in the subject as stated. It constitutes the affirmation of the lecture in opposition to the commonly received doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which is the basis of popular religion. A supplementary assertion is made in the second half of the subject, viz. :—that both "nature" and revelation combine to establish this affirmation by the evidence which they furnish. Evidence, then, is the main thing with which we shall have to deal. The evidence is of two kinds as indicated—1st, the testimony of existing natural facts; and, 2nd, the declaration of the inspired Word of God.
To some it may seem inappropriate to take natural facts at all into account, in discussing a question in which the Holy Scriptures are allowed to have authority. The objection has some force, but when it is considered that nearly all the arguments by which the popular doctrine is supported, are derived from nature, it will not seem out of place to have recourse to the same source, seeing the object is to show that all the arguments upon which it is founded are fallacious, and that the doctrine has literally not a foot to stand upon. This must be the apology for entering upon a department of reasoning which may be distasteful to purely sentimental minds, but which must be thoroughly ransacked before searching minds will be satisfied. We shall endeavor to show—1st, that the natural facts adduced in support of the immortality of the soul do not in any way constitute proof of the doctrine; and, 2nd, that certain natural facts exist which overturn the doctrine. The testimony of Scripture will then come in an appropriate and conclusive supplement.
The first argument usually employed by those who set themselves philosophically to demonstrate the doctrine, is a little subtle, but not difficult of refutation. It is contended that matter cannot think, and that, as man thinks, there must be some immaterial essence in him that performs the thinking, and that, being immaterial, this essence must be indestructible and, therefore, immortal. Stated in this curt and peremptory way, there seems at first sight to be strength in the argument, but a little thought will reveal the weakness of it. Is it quite correct to assume that matter cannot think? Of course, it is evident enough that stone, wood, iron, and inanimate substances in general, are incapable of thought. No one would be so foolish as to assert the contrary; but is it true universally that matter, or substance in every form and condition, is incapable of evolving mental power? To assert this would require the assertor to be able in the first place to define whore the empire of what is called "matter" ends, and to prove that he was so familiar with every part of its domain, as to be able to say with authority, that thought was an impossibility in it. What are the boundaries dividing that department of nature styled "matter," from that which is supposed to be the province of "mind"? Earth, stones, iron and wood would come into the category of matter without a question; but what about smoke? It may be replied that smoke, though in palpable to the touch, is but a diffuse form of matter; and as it will not be contended that smoke is an accessory to thought, except by the liberty of a metaphor, we may allow the answer to go. But what about light and heat, which can be evolved from the gross forms of matter first mentioned? Light and heat con hardly be brought within any of the ordinary definitions
xv. 14); and inhaled by the nostrils of man and beast, it gives physical life—(Psalm civ. 30).
It is evident that there would be great difficulty in arriving at such a definition of matter as would sustain the argument under consideration. In fact, it is an impossibility. It is only an arbitrary system of thought that has created the distinctions implied in the term of metaphysics. Nature—that is, universal existence—is one; it is the elaboration of one primitive power; it is not made up of two antagonistic and incompatible elements. God is the source of all. In Him everything exists; out of Him everything is evolved. Different elements and substances are but different forms of the same eternal essence or first cause, described in the Bible as "spirit," which God is; and in scientific language as electricity. The word "matter," there fore, only describes an aspect of creation, as presented to finite sense; it does not touch the essence of the thing, though intended to do so by the short-sighted, because unexperimental and unobservant system which invented it.
But, it difficult to fix the limits of unsentient matter, there is another difficulty which is equally fatal to the argument, viz., the difficulty of defining the process which is expressed by the word "think." It would be necessary to define this process before it would be legitimate to argue that every form of matter is incapable of it; for, unless defined, how could we say when and where it was possible or not possible? To say that matter cannot think is virtually to allege that the nature of thought is so and so, and the nature of matter so and so, in consequence of which they have no mutual relation. We have seen the impossibility of taking this ground with regard to matter. Who shall define the modus operandi of thought? Impossible, except in general terms, and these general terms destroy the argument now under review. Thought is a power developed by brain organisation, and consists of impressions made upon that delicate organ through the medium of the senses, and afterwards classified and arranged by a function pertaining in different degrees to brain in human form, known as reason. This proposition accepted, destroys the metaphysical argument, since it affirms what the argument denies, viz., that the matter of the brain electrically energised is capable of evolving thought.
The whole argument is based on a fallacy. It assumes complete knowledge of "nature's" capabilities, which is beyond human ken. Who knows what matter is essentially? Chemists can tell the number and proportion of elementary gases which enter into any compound; but who understands the
It is argued that the possession of "reason" is evidence of the existence of an immortal and immaterial soul in man; but the logic of this argument is difficult of discovery. Reason is unquestionably a wonderful attribute, and an extraordinary function of the mental machinery; but how can it be held to prove the existence of a something beyond knowledge or comprehension, since there can be no known connection between that which is incomprehensible and that which is unknown? To say that we have an indestructible soul because we have reasonable faculty, is to repeat the mistake of our forefathers of the last generation, who referred the achievements of machinery to Satanic agency, because in their ignorance they were unable to account for them in any other way. We may be unable to understand how it is that reason is evolved by the organisation with which God has endowed us, but we are compelled to recognise the self-evident fact.
Again, it is argued that the power of the mind to "travel," while the body remains quiescent is proof of its immaterial and, therefore, immortal nature. Let us see. What is this "travelling" of the mind? Does the mind traverse actual space and witness realities? A man has been in America, has seen many sights, and returns home; occasionally he sees those sights over again; the impressions made on the sensorium of the brain through the organs of sight and hearing, while in America, are revived so distinctly that he can actually fancy himself in the place he has left so many thousands of miles' behind. Surely no one will contend that each time this reverie comes upon him, his mind actually goes out of his body, and transfers itself actually to the place thought of? If this be contended, it ought also to be allowed that the man, when so spiritually transferred, should witness what is actually transpiring in the country at the time of Jus spiritual presence, and that, therefore, we might dispense with the post and the tele-graph as clumsy contrivances for getting the news, compared with the facility and dispatch of spiritualography. But this will not be contended. As well might we say that the places and persons we see in our dreams have a real existence. In both cases the phenomenon is the result of a process that takes place within the brain. Memory treasures impressions received, and re-products them as occasion occurs clear, calm, and coherent, if the brain be in a healthy condition; confused, disjointed, and aberrated, if the brain be disordered, whether in sleep or out of it. In no case does reverie involve an actual transit of the mind from one place to another; and hence the "travelling" argument fails to the ground. If a man could to China, while his body remained in Britain, and see the country and the people as they really are, there might be something worthy of consideration, though even then it would not prove the immortality of the soul, but only the wonderful power
The power of dreaming is cited as another fact favorable to the popular doctrine; but here again the argument fails; because dreaming is invariably connected with the living brain. Besides, who ever dreams a sensible dream? Dreams, in general, are a confused and illogical jumble of facts which have at one time or other been stowed away in the warehouse of the brain; and if they prove anything concerning a thinking spirit, independent of the body, they prove that the spirit loses its power in exact proportion to its separation from the assistance of the body; and that, therefore, without the body, it would be powerless.
It is next contended that the spirituality of man's nature is proved by the fact that though he may be deprived of a limb, he retains a consciousness of that limb, sometimes, even, feeling pain in it. The argument is, that if the man is conscious of a part of himself when the material organ of that part is wanting, so will he be conscious of his entire being when the whole body shall be wanting. This looks very plausible : but let us examine it. Why is a man conscious of an absent member? Because the independent nerves of that member remain in the system from the point of disseverment up to their place in the brain; so that although the hand or foot may be absent, the brain goes on to feel as if they were present, because the nerves that produce the sensation of the presence are still active at the brain centre. But if, when you cut off a leg, you could also remove the entire nerves of the leg from the point of amputation up to their roots in the brain, and still preserve a consciousness of the severed member, then the argument for immateriality of nature would have something like a foundation.
But the most powerful natural argument in favor of the popular doctrine has yet to be noticed. It is the one mainly relied upon by all its great advocates. It is this : it is an ascertained fact in physiology that the substance of our bodies undergoes an entire change every seven years; that is, there is a gradual process of substitution going on, by which, atom after atom is expelled from the body as its vital qualities are worn out, and its place filled up by new material from the blood; so that at the end of the period mentioned, the body is made up of entirely new substance. Yet, notwithstanding this constant mutation of the material atoms of the body, and the periodical change of its entire substance, memory and personal identity remain un-affected to the close of life. An old man feels that he is the same person at eighty that he was at ten, although at eighty he has not a single particle of the matter which composed his body when a boy; and the argument is, that the thinking faculty and power of consciousness must be the attribute of some immaterial principle residing in the body. Now this has all the appearance of an unanswerable argument. However, we shall find that it is not so formidable as it seems. The question to be considered is—whether this fact of continuous identity, amid atomic change, can be explained in accordance with the view which regards the mind as a property of living brain substance. We shall maintain that it can; because we find from experience that the qualities resulting from any organic combination of atoms are transmissible to other atoms which may take their place as organic constituents. An atom as it exists in food has no power of sensation; but let it be assimilated by the blood, and incorporated with any of the nerves, and it possesses a vital power which it formerly did not have. It, becomes part of the organisation, and feels whether in man or animal. Why? Because it takes up and perpetu-
Mind is the product of the living brain, and personal identity the sum of its impressions. This will not be questioned by the student of human nature, though it may not be understood. Mental impression is a fact, though a mystery, alike in men and animals; and facts are the things that wise men have to deal with. It is impossible to explain, or even to comprehend, the process by which thought is be gotten in the tissues of the brain; but that the process transpires will not be denied by those that have observed and cogitated. We are conscious of the process, and feel the result in the possession of separate individuality—the power of contemplating all other persons and things objectively. Now in order to perpetuate this result, all that is necessary is to preserve the action of the organ evolving it—the brain—by means of nutrition. This, of course, involves the introduction of fresh material into its structure, but it does not imply an invasion of the unique process going on in it, which the argument in question supposes; the process conquers the material, and converts it to its own uses, and not the material the process. Who ever heard of a man's bone turning to wheat from the eating of flour? The nutritive apparatus assimilates, which is in fact the answer to the argument. The new material entering the brain is assimilated to its existing condition; and thus, although the atoms came and go for a life-time, the conditions remain substantially unaltered, being sustained by the new material, much as a fire is kept up by fuel. If, then, we are asked how a man of eighty feels himself to be the same person that he was at ten, though his entire substance is changed, we reply, those brain impressions which enable him to feel that he is himself, have been kept up all along, though modified by the circumstances and conditions through which he has passed. The process of change is so slow that the new atoms take on the organic qualities of the old, as they are gradually incorporated with the brain, and sustain the general result of the brain's action in preserving its continuous function unimpaired. If cases could be cited in which identity survived the destruction of the brain, the plea for immateriality would be unanswerable; but so long as it is only to be found in connection with a perpetuated brain organisation, we are compelled to reject every theory which ignores this essential and significant fact.
Thus it will be observed that none of the "natural" arguments usually advanced in support of the immateriality and immortality of the soul, are really logical. Each of them falls through when thoroughly tested. The evidence of the other side of the question will be found to stand in a very different position. At the very outset, we are confronted with the difficulty of conceiving how immateriality can inhere in a material organization. Cohesion and conglomeration require affinity as their first condition; but, in this case, affinity is entirely wanting. What connection can exist between "matter" and the immaterial principle of popular belief? They are not in the nature of things susceptible of combination. Yet in the face of this difficulty, we find that the mind is located in one body. It is not a loose etherial thing, capable of detachment from the material person! It is inexorably fixed in the bodily framework, and never leaves it while life continues.
Extending our observation externally, we never discover mind without a corresponding development of brain. Deficient brain is always bound to manifest deficient reason, and vice versa. Master minds in science and literature have large and deeply convoluted cerebrums. These are facts that cannot be impugned. But how are we to explain them consistently with the theory which pronounces mind to be the attribute of an immortal essence? That theory requires that mind be exhibited independently of either quantity or quality of organization. The facts in question are opposed to the theory; and the theory must therefore be dismissed in deference to the facts.
Again; if the mind were immaterial, its functions would be unaffected by the conditions of the body. Thinking and feeling would never abate in vigor or vivacity. We should always be serene and calm-headed—always ready for the "study," whatever might be the state of the bodily machinery; whereas we know that the opposite is the case. Sickness or over-work will exhaust the mental energies, and make the mind a blank. Languor and dulness of spirits are of common experience. We can all testify to days of fretful ennui, in which the mind has refused to perform its lively office; and we can remember, too, the uneasy pillow, when horrible visions have scared us. This never happens in a good state of health, but always when the material organization is out of order. How is this? Does it not tell against the theory which represents the mind as an immaterial, incorruptible, imperishable thing? The mind is the offspring of the brain, and is therefore affected by all its passing disorders.
Let us carry the process further. Let the brain be internally injured; and we then perceive a most signal refutation of the popular idea; the mind vanishes altogether. We make the following extract from the American 'Advent Review,' in illustration :
"Richmond mentions the case of a woman whose brain was exposed in consequence of the removal of a considerable part of its bony covering by disease. He says, 'I repeatedly made a pressure on the brain, and each time suspended all feeling and all intellect, which were immediately restored when the pressure was withdrawn.' The same writer mentions another case. He says, 'There was a man who had been trepanned, and who perceived his intellectual faculties failing, and his existence drawing to a close, every time the effused blood collected upon the brain so as to produce pressure.'
"Prof. Chapman in one of his lectures, says, 'I saw an individual with his skull perforated, and the brain exposed, who was accustomed to submit his brain to be experimented upon by pressure, and who was exhibited by the late Professor Weston to his class. His intellect and moral faculties disappeared on the application of pressure to the brain. They were held under the thumb, as it were, and restored at pleasure to their full activity by discontinuing the pressure.'
"But of all facts, the following, related by Sir Astley Cooper in his Surgical Lectures, is the most remarkable :—'A man of the name of Jones received an injury on the head while on board a vessel in the Mediterranean, which rendered him insensible. The vessel soon after made Gibraltar, where
Dolphin frigate to Deptford, and from thence was sent to St Thomas's Hospital, London. He lay constantly on his back, and breathed with difficulty. When hungry or thirsty, he moved his lips or tongue. Mr Clyne, the surgeon, found a portion of the skull depressed, trepanned him, and removed the depressed portion. Immediately after this operation, the motion of the fingers, occasioned by the beating of the pulse, ceased, and in three hours he sat up in bed, sensation and volition returned, and in four days he got up out of his bed and conversed. The last thing he remembered was the occurrence of taking a prize in the Mediterranean. From the moment of the accident, thirteen months and a few days before, oblivion had come over him—all recollection ceased. Yet on removing a small piece of bone which pressed upon the brain, he was restored to the full possession of the powers of his mind and body.'"
How are such cases to be explained in accordance with the popular theory of the mind? If a derangement of the material organisation suspend mental operation, obviously the mind is not the attribute of a principle existing in us independently of that organisation. The facts cited show that thinking is dependent upon the function of the brain, and cannot therefore be the action of an immaterial principle, which could never be affected by any material condition whatever.
There are other difficulties. If the mind be a spark from God—if it be a part of the Deity Himself, transfused into material organisations (and this is the view contended for by believers in the immortality of the soul) our faculties ought to spring forth in maturity at birth. How then shall we explain infantile inanity? A new-born babe has not a spark of intellect or a glimmer of consciousness. According to popular belief it ought to possess both in full measure, because of the immaterial thinking principle. Why, then, does it not think? Manifestly the theory is wrong. No one can carry his memory back to his birth. He can remember when he was three years old; only in a few cases can he recall an earlier date. 'Yet if popular belief were correct, memory ought to be contemporaneous with life from its very first moment.
Again—If all men partake alike of this divine thinking essence which they are supposed to have inherited from Adam, or received individually at birth, why do they not manifest the same degree of intelligence, and show the same disposition? Why is there such an infinite diversity among men? Why is one man shrewd, while another is dull and doltish?—one vicious and depraved, while a fourth is high-souled and virtuous?—some good, others bad?—some kind, others harsh and inconsiderate?—some docile and gentle, while others are fierce and intractable, and so on? There ought to be uniformity of manifestation, if there be uniformity of power.
These, then, are so many natural obstacles in the way of the doctrine which constitutes the very foundation of all popular religion. They disprove that man is an immaterial entity, capable of disembodied existence. They show him to be a compound—a creature of living organization—a being created from the dust of the ground, vivified with life from God, and ennobled with qualities which constitute him "the image of God but nevertheless mortal in constitution. Why should there be so much inveterate opposition to this view? Is not all natural evidence in its favour? If there how of any organic process is utterly beyond comprehension; yet this does not prevent us in most matters from recognising the result in its proper subordinate relationship. Though we are unable to understand the mode in which nerve communicates sensation, muscle generates strength, blood supplies life, &c., we do not deny that these agencies are the proximate causes of the results developed, whether in man or animals. Now why should there be an exception in the case of thought. What we know of it is all connected with physical organisation. We have no experience of human mind apart from human brain. In fact, we have no experience of any human faculty apart, from its material manifestation; and in ordinary sensible thinking, the various living powers of man are seen and practically acknowledged to, be the properties of the numerous organs which collectively compose himself. If he sees, he has an eye to see; if he hears, he has an ear to hear; and without these organs, he can neither see nor hear; and in proportion as these organs are perfectly formed, is there perfect sight or hearing. Why should this principle not be applied to the mind? The parallel is complete. Man thinks, and he has a brain to think with; and in proportion as the brain is properly organised and developed, does he think comprehensively and well. If it be large, there is power and scope of mind; if small, there is mediocrity; if below par, there is intellectual deficiency, as illustrated in the case of idiots. These are facts, apart altogether from the modern science of phrenology; and their tendency is unmistakable. They prove the connection of mind with living brain-substance, however mysterious that connection may be, and overturn the theory of metaphysical abstraction. Some say "No" to all this; "the brain is simply the medium of the soul's manifestation; deficiency of intellect and other mental irregularities are the result of imperfection in the mediumship:" but there again gratuitous theory is introduced. The answer begs the question. It assumes the very point at issue, viz, the existence of a thinking abstraction to manifest itself. This kind of argument would not be admitted in the consideration of any other question. But suppose we accept the explanation, it avails nothing for the popular theory; for if the soul cannot manifest itself—cannot reason, reflect, be conscious, love, hate, &c.—without a material "medium," what is its value as a thinking agent when without that medium; that is, when the body is in the grave? The explanation, however, cannot be accepted. It is the ingenious suggestion of a philosophy which is in straits to preserve itself from confusion. How much wiser to recognize the fact which presents itself to our actual experience, namely, that all our conscious, as well as unconscious powers as living beings, are the result of a conjunction between the life-power of God and the substance of our organizations, and do not exist apart from that connection in which they are developed.
From nature we turn to the holy oracles, whose voice will perhaps be more heeded than the fallible deductions of philosophy; and here we shall find a perfect agreement with the natural evidence in the case. The first thing to be noted is the conspicuous absence of those common phrases by which the popular doctrine is expressed. "Never-dying soul," "immortal soul," "immortality of the soul," &c., so constantly on the lips of religious teachers, are forms of speech which are there is not the slightest mention. This fact is acknowledged by eminent theologians, but does not seem to suggest to their minds the fictitiousness of the doctrine. They argue the other way, and assume that it is so self-evident as to have been passed over by the sacred writers as a thing understood, and not to be questioned. This is a very untaiisfactory way of getting over the difficulty; because it would be equally competent and more appropriate to suggest the very opposite significance to the silence of the Scriptures on the subject, or in fact to put any construction upon it which learned ingenuity might suggest. The admission of such a style of reasoning would open the door for any kind of doctrine which might be put forward. For if silence mean consent in one case, why not in another? If the immortality of the soul is to be believed without sauction from revelation, on the mere assumption that it is self-evident, may we not uphold any doctrine for which we have a prepossession? A more rational course to pursue is to suspect a doctrine not divinely inculcated, and subject it to the severest scrutiny before receiving it. This is the course adopted in the present lecture; and we shall find that the process will result in a complete breakdown of the doctrine subjected to the test. The Bible is not silent on the question involved, although it says nothing about the immortality of the soul. It supplies direct and conclusive evidence of the absolute ephemerality of human nature, which, in conjunction with its non-enunciation of the opposite doctrine, and the coincidence of natural evidence, establishes an unanswerable case.
Some, however, may not be satisfied that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not definitely broached in the sacred writings Recalling to mind the constant use of the word "soul," they may be disposed to consider that it is countenanced and endorsed in such a way as to render formal enunciation superfluous. For the benefit of such, it will be well to look at the use made of the word in the Scriptures, in order to see its meaning. First, let it be remembered that in its original derivation, the word "soul" simply means a breathing creature, without any reference to its constitution, or the duration of existence. This fact is strikingly illustrated in the renderings adopted by our translators in the first few chapters of Genesis. As applied to Adam it is translated soul (Gen. ii. 7); as applied to beasts, birds, reptiles, and fish, it is rendered "creature" and "thing" (Gen. i. 20, 21, 24, 28). The word originating in respiring existence as its primary signification, is employed to express various ideas arising out of this fundamental antecedent. It is put for persons in the following :—
"And Abraham took * * the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan that is, Abraham took all the persons, &c.—Gen. xii. 5
It is applied to animals in this:—
"Levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle, It is also used to represent mind, disposition, life, &c., and that which it describe is spoken of as capable of hunger (Prov. xix, 15), of being satisfied with food (Lam. i, 11, 19), of touching a material object (Leviticus v, 2), of going into the grave (Job xxxiii 22, 28), of coming out of it (Psalm xxx 3), &c. It is never spoken of as an immaterial, immortal, thinking entity. The original word occurs in the Old Testament about 700 times, and in the New Testament about 180 times; and among all the variety of its renderings, it is impossible to discover anything approaching to the popular dogma. It is rendered "soul" 150 times; "life, or living 190 times; "person" 34 times; and "beasts and creeping things" 23 times. It is also rendered "a man," "a person," "self," "they," "we," "him," "anyone," "breath," "heart," "mind," "appetite," "the body," &c. In no instance has it the significance claimed for it by the professing Christians of modern times. It is never said to be immortal, but always the reverse. It is not only represented as capable of death, but as naturally liable to it. We find the psalmist declaring in Psalm xxii 29, "None can keep alive one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep."—Numbers xxxi. 28.his own soul"; and again, in Psalm lxxxix 48, "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death? Shall he deliver His Soul from the hand of the grave?" And in making an historical reference, he further says, "He spared not Their Soul from Death, but gave their life over to the pestilence"—(Psalm lxxviii 50). Finally, Ezekiel declares (chapter xviii 4), "The soul that sinneth, It Shall Die."
We have to note another difference between Scriptural and modern sentiment. How common it is to indulge in rhapsodies upon the supposed value of the immortal soul. We frequently hear it exclaimed, "Oh! the value of one human soul! Countless worlds cannot be placed in the balance with it!" Now we meet with nothing of this sort in the Scriptures. The sentiment there is entirely the contrary way. Take for instance this:
"What is your Life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away!"—James iv 14.
Or, Psalm cxliv 3, 4—
"Lord, what is man that thou takest knowledge of him, and the son of man that thou makest account of him? Man is like to vanity; his days are as a shadow that passeth away"
Or, Psalm ciii 14-16—
"He knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourisheth; for the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof is known no more."
And more expressive than all, we read in Isaiah xl 15, 17—
"Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance. * * All nations before him are As Nothing, and are counted to him Less than Nothing, and vanity."
And in Daniel iv 35—
"All the inhabitants of the earth Are Reputed as Nothing."
There is only one passage that looks a little different from this. It is this :
"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"—Mark viii 36,37.
This is frequently quoted in justification of the sentiment in question; but it will at once be observed that the words do not describe the absolute value
"For whosoever will save his immortal soul shall lose it, but whosoever shall Lose His Immortal Soul for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it."—Mark viii 35.
What an awful paradox would this express in orthodox mouths! But regard the words in the light in which we have already seen the Scriptures use it, and you perceive beauty in the idea—preciousness in the promise, He who shrinks not from sacrificing his life in this age, rather than deny Christ and forsake his truth, will be rewarded with a more precious life at the resurrection; whereas he who renounces the truth to protect his poor mortal instincts, will be excluded from the blessings of the life to come.
In Genesis, we are furnished with an account of the creation of man, and we its phraseology entirely coincident with the view advocated in this lecture:—
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."
Here we are informed that man was made from the ground, and that that which was produced from the ground, was the being called Man. "But," says an objector, it only means his body." It is possible to say that it means anything we may fancy. A statement of this kind is worth nothing. There is nothing in the passage before us, nor any where else in the Scriptures, to indicate the popular distinction between a man and his body. The substantial organization is here called man—not his body. True, he was without life before the inspiration of the breath of lives, yet he was man. The life was something superadded to give man living, existence. The life was not the man : it was the principle; it was something outside of him, proceeding from a divine source, and infusing itself into the wonderful mechanism prepared its reception. "He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Man Became a living soul." This is frequently quoted in proof of the common doctrine—or rather mis-quoted, lor it is generally given "and breathed Into Him a living soul;" but it really establishes the contrary. What became "a living soul?" The dust-formed being If, therefore, the use of the phrase "became-a living soul," prove the immortality and immateriality of any part of man's nature, it carries the proof to the body, for it was that which became a "living soul." But, of course, this would be absurd. The idea expressed in the passage before us is simple and rational, viz., that the previously inanimate being became a living being when vitalized, but net necessarily immortal, for, though a living soul, it is not said that he became an "ever-living" or "never-dying" soul.
But, whatever Adam may have been as originally constituted, the decree went forth that he should cease to be—that he should return to the state of nothingness from which he had been developed by creative power.
"Because thou hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying thou shall not eat of it, . . . in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
Thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast Thou taken; for dust Thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." —Gen. iii. 17—19.
To say that this sentence merely relates to the body and does not affect the being, is to play with words. The personality expressed in the pronoun "thou" is here distinctly affirmed of the physical organisation. Thou art dust." What could be more emphatic? "Thou shalt return to the dust." This of course is utterly inapplicable to the intangible principle which is supposed to constitute the soul, and refers exclusively to man's material nature. This is Longfellow's view of the matter, if a poet's testimony be of any value on such a subject:
Was not spoken of the soul."
Ergo, it conclusively decides that to be a man's constituent personality which undergoes physical dissolution, or, at any rate, the indispensable basis of it. Abraham expresses this view in the following words :
"Behold now I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes." —Gen. xviii. 27.
This is Abraham's estimate of himself; but some of his modern friends would have corrected him. "Father Abraham, you are mistaken; You are not dust and ashes; it is only your body." Abraham's Unsophisticated view, however, is more reliable than "the (philosophical) wisdom of' this world," which Paul pronounces to be "foolishness with God."—(1 Cornith. iii. 19.)
Paul keeps company with Abraham "I know that in me (that is, in the flesh) dwelleth no good thing—(Romans vii 18), and tells us in general to "Beware of philosophy and vain deceit," which are specially to be guarded against on this question.
James (chap. i. 9, 10) adds to this testimony :
"Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; but the rich in that he is made low; because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away;"
Which is something like a reiteration of Job's words (chap. xiv. 1, 2):
"Man, that is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble; he Cometh forth like a flower and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.
Then come the preclusive words of Solomon, the wisest man of all:—
"I said (or wished) in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts; for that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other: yea, they have all one breath; So that a Man Hath No Pre-Eminence Above a Beast; for all is vanity; all go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."—Eccles. iii. 18—20.
We can fancy the hasty believer in the popular doctrine getting impatient with this statement: "No pre-eminence above a beast!" Had it proceeded from a less authoritative pen than Solomon's, it would have been stigmatised as slanderous and atheistical; but there it stands in all its invulnerable emphasis, as a sweeping condemnation to the flattering dogma which exalts human nature to equality with Deity. It reproves the arrogance of human philosophy, and teaches the humiliating fact that man is "but flesh, a wind that passeth away and (of itself) cometh not again."
Thus do the Scriptures combine with nature in pronouncing man to be a
It is of the highest importance that this negative view should be enforced. It will no longer do to parley with the popular heresy. Duty to God and man compels the proclamation that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is the great error of the age—the mighty delusion which overspreads all people like a veil—the great obstruction to the progress of true Christianity! It mischievously diverts the attention of perishing multitudes from the true bread of life, and gives mere chaff in exchange, which will profit them nothing. It turns them away from the living waters of an offered life, which they are invited to drink without money and without price, and points them to the broken cisterns of their own natures, which hold no water. It tells them they have life in themselves, and are as gods in nature; and thus inflames them with a conceit which is offensive before God. It propounds the serpent's lie, "Ye shall not surely die," and thus disqualifies them for entering "the way of life," and makes them the fitting subjects of Christ's lament to the Jews—"Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life."—(John v. 40.) It is the basis of all the ecclesiastical tyranny which has cursed the world for centuries. It is the parent of all the religious fooleries which have outraged propriety, and chased intelligence into indifference and unbelief. It has paved the way for the absurdities and superstitions of Romanism, and supplied but too plausible a pretext for the existence and power of its execrable priest-craft. It has given rise to the belief in ghosts and apparitions, and in later days, has led to the development of the monstrously foolish system which is getting abroad under the name of "spiritualism." Words fail to describe the mischief it has done. It has rendered the Bible unintelligible, perverted religion, and induced scepticism, by implicating revelation in its insane dogma. It has taken away the vitality of religion, and neutralized its interest by investing it with superstitious mystery, and making it a thing too much above the common experience and comprehension of mankind. It has robbed it of its vigour, and reduced it to a degenerate, effeminate thing, disowned and unpractised by men of robust mind, and heeded only by the sentimental and romantic. What is our duty in the case but to discard the evil thing—to fling it to the moles and to the bats, and humbly aceept the evidence of fact, and the testimony of God's infallible Word.
Mills, Dick and Co., General Printers, Dunedin.
In introducing this work in its present cheap form to the British public, the Publisher considers it right to state, that he is aware another edition is in circulation, and had that been a faithful reprint of the Author's book, this edition would have been uncalled for; but he thinks it not only unfair to the accomplished Authoress, but equally so to the public, to omit whole pages, and mutilate passages in many places, because they contain sentiments that do not fall in with the prejudices of an editor or publisher.
In this edition the original work is given entire, and the Publisher would say to those who consider the author has allowed her fancy to run wild, that what are deemed the wild fancies of to-day may, twenty years hence, be generally accepted as sober realities. It has always been so in time past and may be so again.
The only change the Publisher has seen fit to make is on the title-page namely, the additional explanatory words, "or a Glimpse into Heaven."
Whose Life, Like a Perfume from Beyond the Gates, Penetrates Every Life which Approaches it, the Readers of this Little Book will Owe whatever Pleasant thing they May Find within its Pages.
One week; only one week to-day, this twenty-first of February.
I have been sitting here in the dark and thinking about it, till it seems so horribly long and so horribly short; it has been such a week to live through, and it is such a small part of the weeks that must be lived through, that I could think no longer, but lighted my lamp and opened my desk to find something to do.
I was tossing my paper about—only my own; the packages in the yellow envelopes I have not been quite brave enough to open yet—when I came across this poor little book in which I used to keep memoranda of the weather, and my lovers, when I was a school-girl. I turned the leaves, smiling to see how many blank pages were left, and took up my pen, and now I am not smiling any more.
If it had not come exactly as it did, it seems to me as if I could bear it better. They tell me that it should not have been such a shock. "Your brother had been in the army so long that you should have been prepared for anything. Everybody knows by what a hair a soldiers life is always hanging," and a great deal more that I am afraid I have not listened to. I suppose it is all true; but that never makes it any easier.
The house feels like a prison. I walk up and down and wonder that I ever called it home. Something is the matter with the sunsets; they come and go, and I do not notice them. Something ails the voices of the children snowballing down the street; all the music has gone out of them, and they hurt me like knives. The harmless, happy children!—and Hoy loved the little children.
Why, it seems to me as if the world were spinning around in the light and wind and laughter, and God just stretched down his hand one morning and put it out. It was such a dear, pleasant world to be put out! It was never dearer or more pleasant than it was on that morning. I had not been as happy for weeks. I came up from the Post-Office singing to myself. His letter was so bright and full of mischief! I had not had one like it all the winter. I have laid it away by itself, filled with his jokes and pet names, "Mamie" or "Queen Mamie" every other line, and signed, "Until next time, your happy Roy."
I wonder if all brothers and sisters keep up the baby-names as we did. I wonder if I shall ever become used to living without them.
I read the letter over a great many times, and stopped to tell Mrs.
I went up and opened my window; sat down by it and drew a long breath, and began to count the days till May. I must have sat there as much as half an hour. I was so happy counting the days that I did not hear the front gate, and when I looked down a man stood there,—a great, rough man,—who shouted up that he was in a hurry, and wanted seventy-five cents for a telegram that he had brought over from East Homer. I believe I went clown and paid him, sent him away, came up here and locked the door before I read it. Phoebe found me here at dinner time.
If I could have gone to him, could have busied myself with packing and journeying, could have been forced to think and plan, could have had the shadow of a hope of one more look, one word, I suppose I should have taken it differently. Those two words—"Shot dead"—shut me up and walled me in, as I think people must feel shut up and walled in in hell. I write the words most solemnly, for I know that there has been hell in my heart.
It is all over now. He came back, and they brought him up the steps, and I listened to their feet,—so many feet; he used to come bounding in. They let me see him for a minute, and there was a funeral, and Mrs. Bland came over, and she and PhŒbe attended to everything I suppose. I did not notice nor think till we had left him out there in the cold and had come back. The windows of his room were opened, and the bitter wind swept in. The house was still and damp. Nobody was there to welcome me. Nobody would ever be . . . . . . .
Poor old Phoebe! I had forgotten her. She was waiting at the kitchen window in her black bonnet; she took off my things and made me a cup of tea, and kept at work near me for a little while, wiping her eyes. She came in just now, when I had left my unfinished sentence to dry, sitting here with my face in my hands. "Laws now, Miss Mary, my dear! This won't never do,—a rebellin' agin Providence, and singein' your hair on the lamp chimney this way! The dining-room lire's goin' beautiful, and the salmon is toasted to a brown. Put away them papers and come right along!"
Who originated that most exquisite of inquisitions, the condolence system?
A solid blow has in itself the elements of its rebound; it arouses the antagonism of the life on which it falls; its relief is the relief of a combat. But a hundred little needles pricking at us,—what is to be done with them? The hands hang down, the Knees are feeble. We cannot so much as gasp, because they are little needles.
I know that there are those who like these calls; but why, in the name of all sweet pity, must we endure them without respect of persons, as we would endure a wedding reception or make a party-call?
Perhaps I write excitedly and hardly. I feel excited and hard. I am sure I do not mean to be ungrateful for real sorrowful sympathy, however imperfectly it may be shown, or that near friends (if one has them) cannot give, in such a time as this, actual strength, even if they fail of comfort, by look and tone and love. But it is not near friends who are apt to wound, nor real sympathy which sharpens the worst of the needles. It is the fact that all your chance acquaintances feel called upon to bring their curious eyes and jarring words right into the silence of your first astonishment; taking you in a round of morning calls with kid gloves and parasol, and the liberty to turn your heart about and cut into it at pleasure. You may quiver at every touch, but there is no escape, because it is "the thing."
For instance, Meta Tripp came in this afternoon,—I have refused myself to everybody but Mrs. Bland before, but Meta caught me in the parlour, and there was no escape. She had come, it was plain enough, because she must, and she had come early, because, she too having lost a brother in the war, she was expected to be very sorry for me. Very likely she was, and very likely she did the best she knew how, but she was—not as uncomfortable as I, but as uncomfortable as she could be, and was evidently glad when it was over. She observed, as she went out, that I should not feel so sad by and by. She felt very sad at first when Jack died, but everybody got over that after a time. The girls were going to sew for the Fair next week at Mr. Quirk's, and she hoped I would exert myself and come. All, well:—
It is not that the child is to be blamed for not knowing enough to stay away; but her coming here has made me wonder whether I am different from other women; why Roy was so much more to me than many brothers are to many sisters. I think it must be that there never was another like Roy. Then we have lived together so long, we two alone, since father died, that he had grown to me, heart of my heart, and life of my life. It did not seem as if he could be taken, and I be left. Besides, I suppose most young women of my age have their dreams, and a future probable or possible, which makes the very incompleteness of life sweet, because of the symmetry which is waiting somewhere. But that was settled so long ago for me that it makes it very different. Roy was all there was.
Death and heaven could not seem very different to a Pagan from what they seem to me. I say this deliberately. It has been deliberately forced upon me. That of which I had a faint consciousness in the first shock takes shape now. I do not see how one with such thoughts in her heart as I have had can possibly be "regenerate," or stand any chance of ever becoming "one of the redeemed." And here I am, what I have been for six years, a member of an Evangelical church, in good and regular standing!
The bare, blank sense of physical repulsion from death, which was all the idea I had of anything when they first brought him home, has not gone yet. It is horrible. It was cruel. Roy, all I had in the wide world,—Roy, with the flash in his eyes, with his smile that lighted the house all up; with his pretty, soft hair that I used to curl and kiss about my finger, his bounding step, his strong arras that folded me in and cared for me,—Roy snatched away in an instant by a dreadful God, and laid out there in the wet and snow, in the hideous wet and snow,—never to kiss him, never to see him any more!
He was a good boy. Roy was a good boy. He must have gone to heaven. But I know nothing about heaven. It is very far off. In my best and happiest days, I never liked to think of it. If I were to go there it could do me no good, for I should not see Roy. Or if by chance I should see him standing up among the grand, white angels, he would not be the old dear Roy. I should grow so tired of singing! Should long and fret for one little talk,—for I never said good-bye, and——
I will stop this.
A scrap from the German of Bürger, which I came across to-day shall be copied here.
"Be calm, my child, forget thy woe, And think of God and heaven; Christ thy Redeemer hath to thee Himself for comfort given. "O mother, mother, what is heaven? O mother, what is hell? To be with Wilhelm,—that's my heaven; Without him,—that's my hell."
Miss Meta Tripp, in the ignorance of her little silly heart, has done me a great mischief.
Phoebe prepared me for it by observing, when she came up yesterday to dust my room, that "folks was all sayin' that Mary Cabot"—(Homer is not an aristocratic town, and PhŒbe doffs and dons my title at her own sweet will)—that Mary Cabot was dreadful low sence Royal died, and hadn't ought to stay shut up by herself, day in and day out. It was behaving contrary to the will of Providence, and very bad for her health too." Moreover, Mrs. Bland, who called this morning with her three babies,—she never is able to stir out of the house without those children, poor thing!—lingered awkwardly
My good little minister's wife broke down all in a blush, at this point in her "porochial duties" (I more than suspect that her husband had a hand in the matter), so I took pity on her embarrassment, and said smiling that I would think about it.
I see just how the leaven has spread. Miss Meta, a little overwhelmed and a good deal mystified by her call here, pronounces "poor Mary Cabot so sad; she wouldn't talk about Royal; and you couldn't persuade her to come to the Fair; and she was so sober!— why it was dreadful!" Therefore, Homer has made up its mind that I shall become resigned in an arithmetical manner, and comforted according to the Rule of Three.
I wish I could go away! I wish I could go away and creep into the ground and die! If nobody need ever speak any more words to me! If anybody only knew what to say!
Little Mrs. Brand has been very kind, and I thank her with all my heart. But she does not know. She does not understand. Her happy heart is bound up in her little live children. She never laid anybody away under the snow without a chance to say good-bye.
As for the minister, he came, of course, as it was proper that he should, before the funeral, and once after. He is a very good man, but I am afraid of him, and I am glad that he has not come again.
I can only repeat and re-echo what I wrote this noon. If anybody knew what to say!
Just after supper I heard the door-bell, and, looking out of the window, I caught a glimpse of Deacon Quirk's old drab felt hat, on the upper step. My heart sank, but there was no help for me. I waited for PhŒbe to bring up his name, desperately listening to her heavy steps, and letting her knock three times before I answered. I confess to having taken my hair down twice, washed my hands to a most unnecessary extent, and been a long time brushing my dress; also to forgetttng my handkerchief, and having to go back for it after I was down stairs. Deacon Quirk looked tired of waiting. I hope he was.
O, what an ill-natured thing to say! What is coming over me? What would Roy think? What could he?
"Good evening, Mary," said the Deacon, severely, when I went in. Probably he did not mean to speak severely, but the truth is, I think he was a little vexed that I had kept him waiting. I said good evening, and apologised for my delay, and sat down as far from him as I conveniently could. There was an awful silence.
"I came in this evening," said the Deacon, breaking it with a cough, "I came—hem!—to confer with you—"
I looked up. "I thought somebody had ought to come," continued the Deacon, "to confer with you as a Christian brother on your spiritooal condition."
I opened my eyes.
"To confer with you on your spiritooal condition," repeated my visitor. "I understand that you have had some unfortoonate exercises of mind under your affliction, and I observed that you absented yourself from the Communion Table last Sunday."
"I did."
"Intentionally?"
"Intentionally."
He seemed to expect me to say something more; and, seeing that there was no help for it, I answered,—"I did not feel lit to go. I should not have dared to go. God does not seem to me just now what he used to. He has dealt very bitterly with me. But, however wicked I may be, I will not mock Him. I think, Deacon Quirk, that I did right to stay away."
"Well," said the Deacon, twirling his hat with a puzzled look, "perhaps you did. But I don't see the excuse for any such feelings as would make it necessary. I think it my duty to tell you, Mary, that I am sorry to see you in such a rebellious state of mind.
I made no reply.
"Afflictions come from God," he observed, looking at me as impressively as if he supposed that I never heard the statement before.
"Afflictions come from God, and however afflictin' or however crushin' they may be, it is our duty to submit to them. Glory in triboolation, St. Paul says; glory in triboolation."
I continued silent.
"I sympathise with you in this sad dispensation," he proceeded.
Of course you was very fond of Royal; it's natural you should be, quite natural—" He stopped, perplexed, I suppose, by something in my face. "Yes, it's very natural; poor human nature sets a great deal by earthly props and affections. But it's your duty as a Christian and a church-member to be resigned."
I tapped the floor with my foot. I began to think that I could not bear much more.
"To be resigned, my dear young friend. To say 'Abba, Father, and pray that the will of the Lord be done."
"Deacon Quirk!" said I, "I am not resigned. I pray the dear Lord with all my heart to make me so, but I will not say I am, until I am,—if ever that time comes. As for those words about the Lord's will, I would no more take them on my lips than I would blasphemy, unless I could speak them honestly,—and that I cannot do. We had better talk of something else now, had we not?"
Deacon Quirk looked at me. It struck me that he would look very much so at a Mormon or a Hottentot, and I wondered whether he were going to excommunicate me on the spot. As soon as he began to speak, however, I saw that he was only bewildered,—honestly
"My friend," he said, solemnly, "I shall pray for you and leave you in the hands of God. Your brother, whom he has removed from this earthly life for His own wise—"
"We will not talk any more about Roy, if you please," I interrupted; he is happy and safe."
"Hem!—I hope so," he replied moving uneasily in his chair; "I believe he never made a profession of religion, but there is no limit to the mercy of God. It is very unsafe for the young to think that they can rely upon a death-bed repentance, but our God is a covenant-keeping God, and Royal's mother was a pious woman. If you cannot say with certainty that he is numbered among the redeemed, you are justified, perhaps, in hoping so."
I turned sharply on him, but words died on my lips. How could I tell the man of that short, dear letter that came to me in December,—that Roy's was no death-bed repentance, but the quiet, natural growth of a life that had always been the life of the pure in heart; of his manly beliefs and unselfish motives; of that dawning sense of friendship with Christ of which he used to speak so modestly, dreading lest he should not be honest with himself? "Perhaps I ought not to call myself a Christian," he wrote,—I learned the words by heart,—"and I shall make no profession to be such, till I am sure of it, but my life has not seemed to me for a long time to be my own. 'Bought with a price' just expresses it. I can point to no time at which I was conscious by any revolution of feeling of 'experiencing a change of heart,' but it seems to me that a man's heart might be changed for all that. I do not know that it is necessary for us to be able to watch every footprint of God. The way is all that concerns us,—to see that we follow it and Him. This I am sure of; and knocking about in this army life only convinces me of what I felt in a certain way before,—that it is the only way, and He the only guide to follow."
But how could I say anything of this to Deacon Quirk?—this my sealed and sacred treasure, of all that Roy left me the dearest. At any rate I did not. It seemed both obstinate and cruel in him to come there and say what he had been saying. He might have known that I would not say that Roy had gone to Heaven, if,—why, if there had been the breath of a doubt. It is a possibility of which I cannot rationally conceive, but I suppose that his name would never have passed my lips. So I turned away from Deacon Quirk, and shut my mouth, and waited for him to finish. Whether the idea began to struggle into his mind that he might not have been making a very comforting remark, I cannot say; but he started very soon to go.
"Supposing you are right, and Royal was saved at the eleventh hour," he said at parting, with one of his stolid efforts to be consolatory that are worse than his rebukes, "if he is singing the song of Moses and the Lamb (he pointed with his big, dingy thumb at the ceiling), he doesn't rebel against the doings of Providence. All his affections
Those are very spiritooal and scripteral lines, and it's very proper to reflect how true they are."
I saw him go out, and came up here and locked myself in, and have been walking round and round the room. I must have walked a good while, for I feel as weak as a baby. Can the man in any state of existence be made to comprehend that he has been holding me on the rack this whole evening? Yet he came under a strict sense of duty, and in the kindness of all the heart he has! I know, or I ought to know, that he is a good man,—far better in the sight of God to-night, I do not doubt, than I am. But it hurts,—it cuts,—that thing which he said as he went out; because I suppose it must be true; because it seems to me greater than I can bear to have it true.
Roy, away in that dreadful Heaven, can have no thought of me, cannot remember how I loved him, how he left me all alone. The singing and the worshipping must take up all his time. God wants it all. He is a "Jealous God." I am nothing any more to Roy.
And once I was much,—very much to him! His Mamie, his poor Queen Mamie,—dearer, he used to say, than all the world to him,—I don't see how he can like it so well up there as to forget her. Though Roy was a very good boy. But this poor, wicked little Mamie,—why, I fall to pitying her as if she were some one else, and wish that some one would cry over her a little. I can't cry.
Roy used to say a thing—I have not the words, but it was like this,—that one must be either very young or very ungenerous, if one could find time to pity one's self.
I have lain for two nights, with my eyes open all night long. I thought that perhaps I might see him. I have been praying for a touch, a sign, only for something to break the silence into which he has gone. But there is no answer, none. The light burns blue, and I see at last that it is morning, and go down stairs alone, and so the day begins.
Something of Mrs. Browning's has been keeping a dull mechanical time in my brain all day.
But why must He take them? And why should He keep them
then? Or must we stand like a poor worshipper at a cathedral, looking up at his pictured saint afar off upon the other side?
Has every thing stopped just here? Our talks together in the twilight, our planning and hoping and dreaming together; our walks and rides and laughing; our reading and singing and loving,—these then are all gone out forever?
God forgive the words! but Heaven will never be Heaven to mo without them.
Perhaps I had better not write any more here after this.
On looking over the leaves, I see that the little green book has become an outlet for the shallower part of pain.
Meta Tripp and Deacon Quirk, gossip and sympathy that have buzzed into my trouble and annoyed me like wasps (we are apt to make more fuss over a wasp-sting than a sabre-cut), just that proportion of suffering which alone can ever be put into words—the surface.
I begin to understand what I never understood till now—what people mean by the luxury of grief. No, I am sure that I never understood it, because my pride suffered as much as any part of me in that other time. I would no more have spent two consecutive hours drifting at the mercy of my thoughts, than I would have put my hand into the furnace fire. The right to mourn makes everything different. Then, as to mother, I was very young when she died, and father, though I loved him, was never to me what Roy has been.
This luxury of grief, like all luxuries, is pleasurable. Though, as I was saying, it is only the shallow part of one's heart—I imagine that the deepest hearts have their shallows—which can be filled by it, still it brings a shallow relief.
Let it be confessed to this honest book, that, driven to it by desperation, I found in it a wretched sort of content.
Being a little stronger now physically, I shall try to be a little braver; it will do no harm to try. So I seem to see that it was the content of poison—salt-water poured between shipwrecked lips.
At any rate I mean to put the book away and lock it up. Roy used to say that he did not believe in journals. I begin to see why.
I have taken out my book, and am going to write again. But there is an excellent reason. I have something else than myself to write about.
This morning Phoebe persuaded me to walk down to the office, "To keep up my spirits and get some salt pork." She brought my things and put them on me while I was hesitating; tied my victorine and buttoned my gloves; wanned my boots, and fussed about me as if I
"Bless your soul, my dear!" she said, winking briskly, "I don't want no thanks. It's thanks enough jest to see one of your old looks comin' over you for a spell, sence—" She knocked over a chair with her broom, and left her sentence unfinished. Phoebe has always had a queer, clinging, superior sort of love for us both. She dandled us on her knees, and made all our rag-dolls, and carried us through measles and mumps and the rest. Then mother's early death threw all the care upon her. I believe that in her secret heart she considers me more her child than her mistress. It cost a great many battles to become established as "Miss Mary."
"I should like to know," she would say, throwing back her great, square shoulders and towering up in front of me,—"I should like to know if you s'pose I'm a goin to 'Miss' anybody that I've trotted to Bamberry Cross as many times as I have you, Mary Cabot! Catch me!"
I remember how she would insist on calling me "her baby" after I was in long dresses, and it mortified me cruelly once when Meta Tripp was here to tea with some Boston cousins. Poor, good PhŒbe! Her rough love seems worth more to me, now that it is all I have left me in the world. It occurs to me that I may not have taken notice enough of her lately. She has done her honest best to comfort me, and she loved Roy, too.
But about the letter. I wrapped my face up closely in the cr≖pe, so that, if I met Deacon Quirk, he should not recognise me, and, thinking that the air was pleasant as I walked, came home with the pork for Phoebe and a letter for myself. I did not open it; in fact, I forgot all about it, till I had been at home for half an hour. I cannot bear to open a letter since that morning when the lances of light fell on the snow. They have written to me from everywhere—uncles and cousins and old school friends; well-meaning people; saying each the same thing in the same way—no, not that exactly, and very likely I should feel hurt and lonely if they did not write; but sometimes I wish it did not all have to be read.
So I did not notice much about my letter this morning, till presently it occurred to me that what must be done had better be done quickly; so I drew up my chair to the desk, prepared to read and answer on the spot. Something about the writing and the signature rather pleased me: it was dated from Kansas, and was signed with the name of my mother's youngest sister, Winifred Forceythe. I will lay the letter in between these two leaves, for it seems to suit the pleasant, spring-like day; besides, I took out the green book again on account of it.
My Dear Child,—I have been thinking how happy you will be by and by because Roy is happy.
And yet I know—I understand——
You have been in all my thoughts, and they have been such pitiful,
So my letter dies upon my pen. You cannot bear words yet. How should i dare to fret you with them? I can only reach you by my silence, and leave you with the Heart that bled and broke for you and Roy.—
I open my letter to add, that I am thinking of coming to New England with Faith,—you know Faith and I have nobody but each other now. Indeed, I may be on my way by the time this reaches you. It is just possible that I may not come back to the West. I shall be for a time at your Uncle Calvin's, and then my husband's friends think that they must have me. I should like to see you for a day or two, but if you do not care to see me, say so. If you let me come because you think you must, I shall find it out from your face in an hour. I should like to be something to you, or do something for you; but if I cannot, I would rather not come.
I like that letter. I have written to her to come, and in such a way that I think she will understand me to mean what I say. I have not seen her since I was a child. I know that she was very much younger than my mother; that she spent her young ladyhood teaching at the South;—grandfather had enough with which to support her, but I have heard it said that she preferred to take care of herself—that she finally married a poor minister, whose sermons people liked, but whose coat was shockingly shabby; that she left the comforts and elegancies and friends of New England to go to the West and bury herself in an unheard-of little place with him (I think she must have loved him); that he afterwards settled in Lawrence; that there, after they had been married some childless years, this little Faith was born; and that there Uncle Forceythe died about three years ago; that is about all I know of her. I suppose her share of grandfather Burleigh's little property supports her respectably. I understand that she has been living a sort of missionary life among her husband's people since his death, and that they think they shall never see her like again. It is they who keep her from coming home again, Uncle Calvin's wife told me once; they and one other thing—her husband's grave. I hope she will come to see me. I notice one strange thing about her letter. She does not use the ugly words "death" and dying." I don't know exactly what she put in their places, but something that had a pleasant sound.
"To be happy because Hoy is happy." I wonder if she really thinks it is possible. I wonder what makes the words chase me about.
I am afraid that my brave resolutions are all breaking down. The stillness of the May days is creeping into everything; the days
The lazy winds are choking me. Their faint sweetness makes me sick. The moist, rich loam is ploughed in the garden; the grass, more golden than green, springs in the warm hollow by the front gate; the great maple, just reaching up to tap at the window, blazes and bows under its weight of scarlet blossoms. I cannot bear their perfume; it comes up in great breaths, when the window is opened. I wish that little cricket, just waked from his winter's nap, would not sit there on the sill and chirp at me. I hate the bluebirds flashing in and out of the carmine cloud that the maple makes, and singing, singing everywhere.
It is easy to understand how Bianca heard "the nightingales sing through her head," how she could call them "owl-like birds," who sang "for spite," who sang "for hate," who sang "for doom."
Most of all I hate the maple. I wish winter were back again to fold it away in white, with its bare, black fingers only to come tapping at the window. "Roy's maple" we used to call it. How much fun he had out of that old tree!
As far back as I can remember, we never considered spring to be officially introduced till we had had a fight with the red blossoms. Roy used to pelt me well; but with that pretty chivalry of his, which was rare in such a little fellow, which developed afterwards into that rarer treatment of women, of which every one speaks who speaks of him, he would stop the play the instant it threatened roughness. I used to be glad, though, that I had strength and courage enough to make it some fun to him.
The maple is full of pictures of Roy. Roy, not yet over the dignity of his first boots, aiming for the cross-barred branch, coming to the ground with a terrible wrench on his ankle, straight up again before anybody could stop him, and sitting there on the ugly, swaying bough as white as a sheet, to wave his cap—"There, I meant to do it, and I have!" Roy, chopping off the twigs for kindling wood in his mud oven, and sending his hatchet right through the parlour window. Roy cutting leaves for me, and then pulling all my wreaths down over my nose every time I put them on! Roy making me jump halfway across the room with a sudden thump on my window, and, looking out, I would see him with his hat off and hair blown from his forehead, framed in by the scented blossoms, or the quivering green, or the flame of blood-red leaves. But there is no end to them if I begin.
I had planned, if he came this week, to strip the richest branches, and fill his room.
The May-day stillness, the lazy winds, the sweetness in the air, are all gone. A miserable north-easterly storm has set in. The garden loam is a mass of mud; the golden grass is drenched; the poor little cricket is drowned in a mud-puddle; the blue-birds are huddled among the leaves, with their heads under their drabbled
It begins to be evident that it will never do for me to live alone. Yet who is there in the wide world that I could bear to bring here—into Roy's place?
A little old-fashioned book, bound in green and gold, attracted my attention this morning while I was dusting the library. It proved to be my mother's copy of "Elia,"—one that father had given her, I saw by the fly-leaf, in their early engagement days. It is some time since I have read Charles Lamb; indeed, since the middle of February I have read nothing of any sort. Phoebe dries the Journal for me every night, and sometimes I glance at the Telegraphic Summary, and sometimes I don't.
"You used to be fond enough of books," Mrs. Bland says, looking puzzled,—"regular blue-stocking, Mr. Bland called you (no personal objection to you, of course, my dear, but he doesn't like literary women, which is a great comfort to me). Why don't you read and divert yourself now?"
But my brain, like the rest of me, seems to be crushed. I could not follow three pages of history with attention. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Whittier, Mrs. Browning, are filled with Roy's marks,—and so down the shelf. Besides, poetry strikes as nothing else does, deep into the roots of things. One finds everywhere some strain at the fibres of one's heart. A mind must be healthily reconciled to actual life before a poet—at least most poets—can help it. We must learn to bear and to work, before we can spare strength to dream.
To hymns and hymn-like poems, exception should be made. Some of them are like soft hands stealing into ours in the dark, and holding us fast without a spoken word. I do not know how many times Whittier's "Psalm," and that old cry of Cowper's, "God moves in a mysterious way," have quieted me,—just the sound of the words; when I was too wild to take in their meaning, and too wicked to believe them if I had.
As to novels (by the way, Meta Tripp sent me over four yesterday afternoon, among which notice "Aurora Floyd" and "Uncle Silas"), the author of "Rutledge" expresses my feeling about them precisely. I do not remember her exact words, but they are not unlike these—"She had far outlived the passion of ordinary novels; and the few which struck the depths of her experience gave her more pain than pleasure."
However, I took up poor "Elia" this morning, and stumbled upon "Dream Children," to which, for pathos and symmetry, I have read few things superior in the language. Years ago, I almost knew it by heart, but it has slipped out of memory with many other things of late. Any book, if it be one of those which Lamb calls "books which are books," put before us at different periods of life, will unfold to us new meanings,—wheels within wheels, delicate springs of purpose to which, at the last reading, we were stone-blind; gems which perhaps the author ignorantly cut and polished.
A sentence in this "Dream Children," which at eighteen I had passed by with a compassionate sort of wonder, only thinking that it gave me "the blues" to read it, and that I was glad Roy was alive, I have seized upon, and learned all over again now. I write it down to the dull music of the rain.
"And how, when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death, as I thought, pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again."
How still the house is! I can hear the coach rumbling away at the half-mile corner, coming up from the evening train. A little arrow of light has just cut the gray gloom of the West.
The coach to which I sat listening rumbled up to the gate and stopped. Puzzled for the moment, and feeling as inhospitable as I knew how, I went down to the door. The driver was already on the steps, with a bundle in his arms that proved to be a rather minute child; and a lady, veiled, was just stepping from the carriage into the rain. Of course I came to my senses at that, and, calling to PhŒbe that Mrs Forceythe had come, sent her out an umbrella.
She surprised me by running lightly up the steps. I had imagined a somewhat advanced age and a sedate amount of infirmities, to be necessary concomitants of aunthood. She came in all sparkling with rain-drops, and, gently pushing aside the hand with which I was trying to pay her driver, said, laughing :—"Here we are, bag and baggage, you see, 'big trunk, little trunk,' &c., &c. You did not expect me? Ah, my letter missed then. It is too bad to take you by storm in this way. Come, Faith! No, don't trouble about the trunks just now. Shall I go right in here?"
Her voice had a sparkle in it, like the drops on her veil, but it was low and very sweet. I took her in by the dining-room fire, and was turning to take off the little girl's things, when a soft hand stayed me, and I saw that she had drawn off the wet veil. A face somewhat pale looked down at me,—she is taller than I—with large compassionate eyes.
"I am too wet to kiss you, but I must have a look," she said, smiling. "That will do. You are like your mother, very like."
I don't know what possessed me, whether it was the sudden, sweet feeling of kinship with something alive, or whether it was her face or her voice, or all together, but I said :—"I don't think you are too wet to be kissed," and threw my arms about her neck—I am not of the kissing kind, either, and I had on my new bombazine, and she
was very wet. I thought she looked pleased. Phoebe was sent to open the register in the blue room, and as soon as it was warm I went up with them, leading Faith by the hand. I am unused to children, and she kept stepping on my dress, and spinning around and tipping over, in the most astonishing manner. It strikingly reminded me of a top at the last gasp. Her mother observed that she was tired and sleepy. Phoebe was waiting around awkwardly up stairs, with fresh towels on her arm. Aunt Winifred turned and held out her hand. "Well, PhŒbe, I am glad to see you. This is PhŒbe, I am sure? You have altered with everything else since I was here before. You keep bright and well, I hope, and take good care of Miss Mary?"
It was a simple enough thing, to be sure, her taking the trouble to notice the old servant with whom she had scarcely ever exchanged a half-dozen words; but I liked it. I liked the way, too, in which it was done. It reminded me of Roy's fine, well-bred manner towards his inferiors,—always cordial, yet always appropriate; I have heard that our mother had much the same.
I tried to make things look as pleasant as I could down stairs, while they were making ready for tea. The grate was raked up a little, a bright supper-cloth laid on the table, and the curtains drawn. Phoebe mixed a hasty cake of some sort, and brought out the heavier pieces of silver—tea-pot &c., which I do not use when I am alone, because it is so much trouble to take care of them, and because I like the little Wedgwood set that Roy had for his chocolate.
"How pleasant!" said Aunt Winifred, as she sat down with Faith in a high chair beside her, Phoebe had a great hunt up garret for that chair; it has been stowed away there since it and I parted company. "How pleasant everything is here! I believe in bright dining-rooms. There is an indescribable dinginess to most that I have seen, which tends to anything but thankfulness. Homesick, Faith? No; that's right. I don't think we shall be homesick at Cousin Mary's."
If she had not said, the probabilities are that they would have been, for I have fallen quite out of the way of active housekeeping, and have almost forgotten how to entertain a friend. But I do not want her good opinion wasted, and mean they shall have a good time if I can make it for them.
It was a little hard at first to see her opposite me at the table; it was Roy's place.
While she was sitting there in the light, with the dust and weariness of travel brushed away a little, I was able to make up my mind what this aunt of mine looks like.
She is young, then, to begin with, and I find it necessary to reiterate the fact, in order to get it into my stupid brain. The cape and spectacles, the little old woman's shawl and invalid's walk, for which I had prepared myself, persist in hovering before my bewildered eyes, ready to drop down on her at a moment's notice. Just thirty-five she is by her own showing; older than I to be sure; but as
My eyes have been on her face the whole evening, and I believe it is the sweetest face—woman's face—that I have ever seen. Yet she is far from being a beautiful woman. It is difficult to say what makes the impression; scarcely any feature is accurate, yet the tout ensemble seems to have no fault. Her hair, which must have been bright bronze once, has grown gray—quite gray—before its time. I really don't know of what colour her eyes are; blue, perhaps, most frequently, but they change with every word that she speaks; when quiet, they have a curious, far-away look, and a steady, lambent light shines through them. Her mouth is well cut and delicate, yet you do not so much notice that as its expression. It looks as if it held a happy secret, with which, however near one may come to her, one can never intermeddle. Yet there are lines about it and on her forehead, which are proof plain enough that she has not always floated on summer seas. She yet wears her widow's black, but relieves it pleasantly by white at the throat and wrists. Take her altogether, I like to look at her.
Faith is a round, rolling, rollicking little piece of mischief, with three years and a half of experience in this very happy world. She has black eyes and a pretty chin, funny little pink hands all covered with dimples, and a dimple in one cheek besides. She has tipped over two tumblers of water, scratched herself all over playing with the cat, and set her apron on fire already since she has been here. I stand in some awe of her; but, after I have become initiated, I think that we shall be very good friends.
"Of all names in the catalogue," I said to her mother, when she came down into the parlour after putting her to bed, "Faith seems to be about the most inappropriate for this solid-bodied, twinkling little bairn of yours, with her pretty red cheeks, and such an appetite for supper!"
"Yes," she said, laughing, "there is nothing spirituelle about Faith. But she means just that to me. I could not call her anything else. Her father gave her the name." Her face changed, but did not sadden; a quietness crept into it and into her voice, but that was all.
"I will tell you about it sometime,—perhaps," she added, rising and standing by the fire. "Faith looks like him." Her eyes assumed their distant look, "like the eyes of those who see the dead," and gazed away,—so far away, into the fire, that I felt that she would not be listening to anything that I might say, and therefore said nothing.
We spent the evening chatting cosily. After the fire had died down in the grate (I had PhŒbe light a pine-knot there, because I noticed that Aunt Winifred fancied the blaze in the dining-room), we drew up our chairs into the corner by the register, and roasted away to our heart's content. A very bad habit, to sit over the register, and Aunt Winifred says she shall undertake to break me off it. We talked about everything under the sun,—uncles, aunts, cousins, Kansas and Connecticut, the surrenders, and the assassination, books, pictures, music, and Faith,—O, and PhŒbe and the cat. Aunt Winifred talks well, and does not gossip nor exhaust her resources; one feels always that she has has material in reserve on any subject that is worth talking about.
For one thing I thank her with all my heart: she never spoke of Roy.
Upon reflection, I find that I have really passed a pleasant evening. She knocked at my door just now, after I had written the last sentence, and had put away the book for the night. Thinking that it was Phoebe, I called, "Come in," and did not turn. She had come to the bureau where I stood unbraiding my hair, and touched my arm, before I saw who it was. She had on a crimson dressing-gown of warm flannel, and her hair hung down on her shoulders. Although so gray, her hair is massive yet, and coils finely when she is dressed.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "but I thought you would not be in bed, and I came in to say,—let me sit somewhere else at the breakfast-table, if you like, I saw that I had taken 'the vacant place.' Good night, my dear."
It was such a little thing! I wonder how many people would have noticed it, or taken the trouble to speak of it. The quick perception, the unusual delicacy, these too are like Roy. I almost wish that she had stayed a little longer. I almost think that I could bear to have her speak to me about him.
Faith, in the next room, seems to have wakened from a frightened dream, and I can hear their voices through the wall. Her mother is soothing and singing to her in the broken words of some old lullaby with which Phoebe used to sing Roy and me to sleep, years and years ago. The unfamiliar, home-like sound is pleasant in the silent house. Phoebe, on her way to bed, is stopping on the garret-stairs to listen to it. Even the cat comes mewing up to the door, and purring as I have not heard the creature purr since the old Sunday-night singing, hushed so long ago.
I was awakened and nearly smothered this morning by a pillow thrown directly at my head. Somewhat unaccustomed in the respectable, old maid's life that I lead, to such a pleasant little method of salutation, I jerked myself upright, and stared. There stood Faith in her night-dress, laughing as if she would suffocate, and her mother in search of her was just knocking at the open door.
"She insisted on going to wake Cousin Mary, and would'nt be washed till I let her; but I stipulated that she should kiss you softly on both your eyes."
"I did," said Faith, stoutly; "I kissed her eyes, both two of 'em, and her nose, and her mouth, and her neck; then I pulled her hair, and then I spinched her; but I thought she'd have to be banged a little. Wasn't it a bang, though!"
It really did me good to begin the day with a hearty laugh. The days usually look so long and blank at the beginning, that I can hardly make up my mind to step out into them. Faith's pillow was the famous pebble in the pond, to which authors of original imagination invariably resort; I felt its little circles widening out all through the day. I wonder if Aunt Winifred thought of that. She thinks of many things.
For instance, afraid apparently that I should think I was afflicted by one of those professional visitors who hold that a chance relationship justifies them imposing on one from the beginning to the end of the chapter, she managed to make me understand, this morning, that she was expecting to go back to Uncle Forceythe's brother on Saturday. I was surprised at myself to find that this proposition struck me with dismay. I insisted with all my heart on keeping her for a week at least, and sent forth a fiat that her trunks should be unpacked.
We have had a quiet, home-like day. Faith found her way to the orchard, and installed herself there for the day, overhauling the muddy grass with her bare hands to find dandelions. She came in at dinner-time as brown as a little nut, with her hat hanging down her neck, her apron torn, and just about as dirty as I should suppose it possible for a clean child to succeed in making herself. Her mother, however, seemed to be quite used to it, and the expedition with which she made her presentable I regard as a stroke of genius.
While Faith was disposed of, and the house still, auntie and I took our knitting and spent a regular old woman's morning at the south window in the dining-room. In the afternoon Mrs. Bland came over, babies and all, and sent up her card to Mrs. Forceythe.
Supper-time came, and still there had not been a word of Boy. I began to wonder at, while I respected this unusual silence.
While her mother was putting Faith to bed, I went into my room alone, for a few moments' quiet. An early dark had fallen, for it had clouded up just before sunset. The dull, gray sky and narrow horizon shut down and crowded in everything. A soldier from the village, who has just come home, was walking down the street with his wife and sister. The crickets were chirping in the meadows The faint breath of the maple came up.
I sat down by the window, and hid my face in both my hands. I must have sat there some time, for I had quite forgotten that I had company to entertain, when the door softly opened and shut, and some one came and sat down on the couch beside me. I did not speak, for I could not, and, the first I knew, a gentle arm crept about
"There," she said, in her low, lulling voice, "now tell Auntie all about it."
I don't know what it was, whether the voice, or touch, or words, but it came so suddenly,—and nobody had held me for so long—that everything seemed to break up and unlock in a minute, and I threw up my hands and cried. I don't know how long I cried.
She passed her hand softly to and fro across my hair, brushing it away from my temples while they throbbed and burned; but she did not speak. By and by I sobbed out :—"Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!" as Faith sobs out in the dark. It seemed to me that I must have help or die.
"Yes, dear. I understand. I know how hard it is. And you have been bearing it alone so long? I am going to help you, and you must tell me all you can."
The strong, decided words, "I am going to help you," gave me the first faint hope I have had, that I could be helped, and I could tell her—it was not sacrilege—the pent-up story of these weeks. All the time her hand went softly to and fro across my hair.
Presently, when I was weak and faint with the new comfort of my tears, "Aunt Winifred," I said, "I don't know what it means to be resigned; I don't know what it means!"
Still her hand passed softly to and fro across my hair.
"To have everything stop all at once! without giving me any time to learn to bear it. Why, you do not know—it is just as if a great black gate had swung to and barred out the future, and barred out him, and left me all alone in any world that I can ever live in, forever and forever."
"My child," she said, with emphasis solemn and low upon the words,—"my child, I do know. I think you forget—my husband."
I had forgotten. How could I? We are most selfishly blinded by our own griefs. No other form than ours ever seems to walk with us in the furnace. Her few words made me feel, as I could not have felt if she had said more, that this woman who was going to help me had suffered too; had suffered perhaps more than I—that, if I sat as a little child at her feet, she could teach me through the kinship of her pain.
"O my dear," she said, and held me close, "I have trodden every step of it before you—every single step."
"But you never were so wicked about it! You never felt—why, I have been afraid I should hate God! You never were so wicked as that."
Low under her breath she answered "Yes,"—this sweet, saintly woman who had come to me in the dark as an angel might. Then, turning suddenly, her voice trembled and broke :—"Mary, Mary, do you think He could have lived those thirty-three years, and be cruel to you now? Think that over and over; only that. It may be the
cling with both hands, Mary, and keep it."
I only put both hands about her neck and clung there; but I hope—it seems, as if I clung a little to the thought besides; it was as new and sweet to me as if I had never heard of it in all my life; and it has not left me yet.
"And then, my dear," she said, when she had let me cry a little longer, "when you have once found out that Roy's God loves you more than Roy does, the rest comes more easily. It will not be as long to wait as it seems now. It isn't as if you never were going to see him again."
I looked up bewildered.
"What's the matter, dear?"
"Why, do you think I shall see him—really see him?"
"Mary Cabot," she said abruptly, turning to look at me, "who has been talking to you about this thing?"
"Deacon Quirk," I answered faintly,—"Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland."
She put her other arm around me with a quick movement, as if she would shield me from Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland. "Do I think you will see him again? You might as well ask me if I thought God made you and made Roy, and gave you to each other. See him! Why, of course you will see him as you saw him here."
"As I saw him here! Why, here I looked into his eyes, I saw him smile, I touched him. Why, Aunt Winifred, Roy is an angel!"
She patted my hand with a little, soft, comforting laugh.
"But he is not any the less Roy for that—not any the less your own real Roy, who will love you and wait for you and be very glad to see you, as he used to love and wait and be glad when you came home from a journey on a cold winter night."
"And he met me at the door, and led me in where it was light and warm!" I sobbed.
"So he will meet you at the door in this other home, and lead you into the light and the warmth. And cannot that make the cold and dark a little shorter? Think a minute."
"But there is God—I thought we went to Heaven to worship him, and——"
"Shall you worship more heartily or less, for having Roy again? Did Mary love the Master more or less, after Lazarus came back? Why, my child, where did you get your ideas of God? Don't you suppose He knows how you love Roy?"
I drank in the blessed words without doubt or argument. I was too thirsty to doubt or argue. Some other time I may ask her how she knows this beautiful thing, but not now. All I can do now is to take it into my heart and hold it there.
Roy my own again—not only to look at standing up among the singers—but close to me; somehow or other to be as near as—to be nearer than—he was here, really mine again! I shall never let this go.
After we had talked awhile, and when it came time to say good night, I told her a little about my conversation with Deacon Quirk, and what I said to him about the Lord's will. I did not know but that she would blame me.
"Some time," she said, turning her great, compassionate eyes on me,—I could feel them in the dark,—and smiling, "you will find out all at once, in a happy moment, that you can say those words with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; it will come, even in this world, if you will only let it. But, until it does, you do right, quite right, not to scorch your altar with a false burnt offering. God is not a God to be mocked. He would rather have only the old cry: 'I believe; help mine unbelief,' and wait till you can say the rest."
"It has often grated on my ears," she added, "to hear people speak those words unworthily. They seem to me the most solemn words that the Bible contains, or that Christian experience can utter. As far as my observation goes, the good people—for they are good people—who use them when they ought to know better are of two sorts. They are people in actual agony, bewildered, racked with rebellious doubts, unaccustomed to own even to themselves the secret see things of sin; really persuaded that because it is a Christian duty to have no will but the Lord's, they are under obligations to affirm that they have no will but the Lord's. Or else they are people who know no more about this pain of bereavement than a child. An affliction has passed over them, put them into mourning, made them feel uncomfortable till the funeral was over, or even caused them a shallow sort of grief, of which each week evaporates a little till it is gone. These mourners air their trouble the longest, prate loudest about resignation, and have the most to say to you or me about our 'rebellious state of mind.' Poor things! One can hardly be vexed at them for pity. Think of being made so!"
"There is still another class of the cheerfully resigned," I suggested, "who are even more ready than these to tell you of your desperate wickedness——"
"People who have never had even the semblance of a trouble in all their lives," she interrupted. "Yes. I was going to speak of them. Of all miserable comforters, they are the most arrogant."
"As to real instant submission," she said presently, "there is some of it in the world. There are sweet, rare lives capable of great loves and great pains, which yet are kept so attuned to the life of Christ, that the cry in the Garden comes scarcely less honestly from their lips, than from his. Such, like the St. John, are but one among the Twelve. Such, it will do you and me good, dear, at least to remember."
"Such," I thought when I was left alone, "you, new dear friend of mine, who have come with such a blessed coming into my lonely days,—such you must be now, whatever you were once." If i should tell her that, how she would open her soft eyes!"
As I was looking over the green book last night, Aunt Winifred came up behind me and softly laid a bunch of violets down between the leaves. By an odd contrast, the contented, passionless things fell against those two verses that were copied from the German, and completely covered them from sight. I lifted the flowers, and held up the page for her to see. As she read, her face altered strangely; her eyes dilated, her lip quivered, a flush shot over her cheeks and dyed her forehead up to the waves of her hair. I turned away quickly, feeling that I had committed a rudeness in watching her, and detecting in her, however involuntarily, some far, inner sympathy, or shadow of a long-past sympathy, with the desperate words.
"Mary," she said, laying down the book, "I believe Satan wrote that." She laughed a little then, nervously, and paled back into her quiet, peaceful self. "I mean that he inspired it. They are wicked words. You must not read them over. You will outgrow them sometime with a beautiful growth of trust and love. Let them alone till that time comes. See, I will blot them out of sight for you with colours as blue as heaven—the real heaven, where God will be loved the most."
She shook apart the thick, sweet nosegay, and, taking a half-dozen of the little blossoms, pinned them, dripping with fragrant dew, upon the lines. There I shall let them stay, and, since she wishes it, I shall not lift them to see the reckless words till I can do it safely.
This afternoon, Aunt Winifred has been telling me about herself. Somewhat more, or of a different kind, I should imagine, from what she has told most people. She seems to love me a little, not in a proper kind of way, because I happen to be her niece, but for my own sake. It surprises me to find how pleased I am that she should.
That Kansas life must have been very hard to her, in contrast as it was with the smooth elegance of her girlhood; she was very young too, when she undertook it. I said something of the sort to her.
"They have been the hardest and the easiest, the saddest and the happiest years of all my life," she answered.
I pondered the words in my heart, while I listened to her story. She gave me vivid pictures of the long, bright bridal journey, overshadowed with a very mundane weariness of jolting coaches and railway accidents before its close; of the little neglected hamlet which waited for them, twenty miles from a post-office and thirty from a school-house; of the parsonage, a log-hut among log-huts, distinguished and adorned by a little lath and plastering, glass windows, and a doorstep;—they drew in sight of it at the close of a tired day, with a red sunset lying low on the flats.
Uncle Forceythe wanted mission-work, and mission-work he found here with—I should say, with a vengeance, if the expression were exactly suited to an elegantly constructed and reflective journal.
"My heart sank for a moment, I confess," she said, "but it never would do, you know, to let him suspect that, so I smiled away as well
"Said what?"
She blushed a little, like a girl.
"I believe I said I should be happy in Patagonia—with him. I made him laugh at last, and say that my face and words were like a beautiful prophecy. And, Mary, if they were, it was beautifully fulfilled. In the roughest times—times of ragged clothes and empty flour-barrels, of weakness and sickness and quack doctors, of cold and discouragement, of prairie fires and guerillas—from trouble to trouble, from year's end to year's end, we were happy together, we two. As long as we could have each other, and as long as we could be about our Master's business, we felt as if we did not dare to ask for anything more, lest it should seem that we were ungrateful for such wealth of mercy."
It would take too long to write out here the half that she told me, though I wish I could, for it interested me more than any story that I have ever read. After years of Christ-like toiling to help those rough old farmers and wicked bushwhackers to Heaven, the call to Lawrence came, and it seemed to Uncle Forceythe that he had better go. It was a pleasant, influential parish, and there, though not less hard at work, they found fewer rubs and more comforts; there Faith came, and there were their pleasant days, till the war.—I held my breath to hear her tell about Quantrell's raid. There, too, Uncle wasted through that death-in-life, consumption; there he "fell on sleep," she said, and there she buried him. She gave me no further description of his death than those words, and she spoke them with her far-away, tearless eyes looking off through the window, and after she had spoken she was still for a time. The heart knoweth its own bitterness; that grew distinct to me, as I sat, shut out by her silence. Yet there was nothing bitter about her face.
"Faith was six months old when he went," she said presently.
"We had never named her: Baby was name enough at first for such a wee thing; then she was the only one, and had come so late that it seemed to mean more to us than to most to have a baby all to ourselves, and we liked the sound of the word. When it became quite certain that John must go, we used to talk it over, and he said that he would like to name her, but what, he did not tell me.
"At last, one night, after he had lain for a while thinking with closed eyes, he bade me bring the child to him. The sun was setting, I remember, and the moon was rising. He had had a hard day; the life was all scorched out of the air. I moved the bed up by the window, that he might have the breath of the rising wind. Baby was wide awake, cooing softly to herself in the cradle, her bits of damp curls clinging to her head, and her pink feet in her hands. I took her up and brought her just as she was, and knelt down by the bed.
"So there in the sunset and the moonrise, we two alone together, he baptized her, and we gave our little girl to God."
When she had said this, she rose and went over to the window, and stood with her face from me. By and by, "It was the fourteenth," she said, as if musing to herself,—the fourteenth of June."
I remember now that Uncle Forceythe died on the fourteenth of June. It may have been that the words of that baptismal blessing were the last that they heard, either child or mother.
It has been a pleasant day; the air shines like transparent gold; the wind sweeps like somebody's strong arms over the flowers, and gathers up a crowd of perfumes that wander up and down about one. The church bells have rung out like silver all day. Those bells—especially the Second Advent at the further end of the village—are positively ghastly when it rains.
Aunt Winifred was dressed bright and early for church. I, in morning dress and slippers, sighed and demurred.
"Auntie, do you expect to hear anything new?"
"Judging from your diagnosis of Dr. Bland,—no."
"To be edified, refreshed, strengthened, or instructed?"
"Perhaps not."
"Bored, then?"
"Not exactly."
"What do you expect?"
"There are the prayers and singing. Generally one can, if one tries, wring a little devotion from the worst of them. As to a minister, if he is good and commonplace, young and earnest and ignorant, and I, whom he cannot help one step on the way to Heaven, consequently stay at home, Deacon Quirk, whom he might carry a mile or two, by and by stays at home also. If there is to be a 'building fitly joined together,' each stone must do its part of the upholding. I feel better to go half a day always. I never compel Faith to go, but I never have a chance, for she teases not to be left at home."
"I think it's splendid to go to church most the time," put in Faith, who was squatted on the carpet, counting sugared caraway seeds,—"all but the sermon. That isn't splendid. I don't like the great big prayers 'n' things. I like caramary seeds, though; mother always gives 'em to me in meeting 'cause I'm a good girl. Don't you wish you were a good girl, Cousin Mary, so's you could have some. Besides, I've got on my best hat and my button-boots. Besides, there used to be a real funny little boy up in meeting at home, and he gave me a little tin dorg once over the top of the pew. Only mother made me give it back. O, you ought to seen the man that preached down
he banged the Bible like everything!"
"There's a devotional spirit for you!" I said to her mother.
"Well," she answered, laughing, "it is better than that she should be left to play dolls and eat preserves, and be punished for disobedience. Sunday would invariably become a guilty sort of holiday at that rate. Now, caraways or 'bully old ministers' notwithstanding, she carries to bed with her a dim notion that this has been holy time and pleasant time. Besides, the associations of a church-going childhood, if I can manage them genially, will be a help to her when she is older. Come, Faith! go and pull off Cousin Mary's slippers, and bring down her boots, and then she'll have to go to church. No, I didn't say that you might tickle her feet!"
Feeling the least bit sorry that I had set the example of a stay-at-home Christian before the child, I went directly up stall's to make ready, and we started after all in good season.
Dr. Bland was in the pulpit. I observed that he looked—as indeed did the congregation bodily—with some curiosity into our slip, where it has been a rare occurrence of late to find me, and where the light, falling through the little stained glass oriel, touched Aunt Winifred's thoughtful smile. I wondered whether Dr. Bland thought it was wicked for people to smile in church. No, of course he has too much sense. I wonder what it is about Dr. Bland that always suggests such questions.
It has been very warm all day—that aggravating, unseasonable heat which is apt to come in spasms in the early part of May, and which, in thick spring alpaca and heavy sack, one finds intolerable. The thermometer stood at on the church porch; every window was shut, and everybody's fan was fluttering. Now, with this sight before him, what should our observant minister do, but give out as his first hymn, "Thine earthly Sabbaths." "Thine earthly Sabbaths would be a beautiful hymn, if it were not for those lines about the weather—
no clouded sun,But sacred, high, eternal noon"!
There was a great hot sunbeam striking directly on my black bonnet. My fan was broken. I gasped for air. The choir went over and over and over the words, spinning them into one of those indescribable tunes, in which everybody seems to be trying to get through first. I don't know what they called them,—they always remind me of a game of "Tag."
I looked at Aunt Winifred. She took it more coolly than I, but an amused little smile played over her face. She told me after church that she had repeatedly heard that hymn given out at noon of an intense July day. Her husband, she said, used to save it for the winter, or for cloudy afternoons. "Using means of grace," he called that.
However, Dr. Bland did better the second time, Aunt Winifred joined in the singing, and I enjoyed it, so I will not blame the poor
When he announced his text, "For our conversation is in heaven," Aunt Winifred and I exchanged glances of content. We had been talking about heaven on the way to church; at least till Faith, not finding herself entertained, interrupted us by some severe speculations as to whether Maltese kitties were mulattoes, and "why the bell-ringer didn't jump off the steeple some night, and see if he could'nt fly right up, the way Elijah did."
I listened to Dr. Bland as I have not listened for a long time. The subject was of all subjects nearest my heart. He is a scholarly man, in his way. He ought to know, I thought, more about it than Aunt Winifred. Perhaps he could help me. His sermon, as nearly as I could recall it, was substantially this :—"The future life presented a vast theme for our speculation. Theories 'too numerous to mention' had been held concerning it. Pagans had believed in a coming state of rewards and punishments. What natural theology had dimly foreshadowed, Revelation had brought in, like a full-orbed day, with healing on its wings." I am not positive about the metaphors.
"As it was fitting that we should at times turn our thoughts upon the threatenings of Scripture, it was eminently suitable also that we should consider its promises. He proposed in this discourse to consider the promise of heaven, the reward offered by Christ to his good and faithful servants.
"In the first place: What is heaven?"
I am not quite clear in my mind what it was, though I tried my best to find out. As nearly as I can recollect, however—
Having heard these observations before, I will not enlarge as he did upon them, but leave that for the "vivid imagination" of the green book.
"In the second place: What will be the employments of heaven?
"We shall study the character of God. An infinite mind must of necessity be eternally an object of study to a finite mind. The finite mind must of necessity find in such study supreme delight. All lesser joys and interests will pale. He felt at moments, in reflecting on this theme, that that good brother who, on being asked if he expected to see the dead wife of his youth in heaven, replied—'I expect to be so overwhelmed by the glory of the presence of God, that it may be thousands of years before I shall think of my wife,'—he felt that perhaps this brother was nearer the truth."
Poor Mrs. Bland looked exceedingly uncomfortable.
"We shall also glorify God."
He enlarged upon this division, but I have forgotten exactly how. There was something about adoration, and the harpers harping with their harps, and the sea of glass, and crying, Worthy the Lamb! and
"We shall, moreover, love each other with a universal and unselfish love."
"That we shall recognise our friends in heaven, he was inclined to think, after mature deliberation, was probable. But there would be no special selfish affections there. In this world we have enmities and favoritisms. In the world of bliss our hearts would glow with holy love alike to all other holy hearts."
I wonder if he really thought that would make "a world of bliss." Aunt Winifred slipped her hand into mine under her cloak. Ah. Dr. Bland, if you had known how that little soft touch was preaching against you!
"In the words of an eminent divine, who has long since entered into the joys of which he spoke—'Thus, whenever the mind roves through the immense region of heaven, it will find, among all its innumerable millions, not an enemy, not a stranger, not an indifferent heart, not a reserved bosom. Disguise here, and even concealment, will be unknown. The soul will have no interests to conceal, no thoughts to disguise. A window will be opened in every breast, and show to every eye the rich and beautiful furniture within!'
"Thirdly, How shall we fit for heaven?" He mentioned several ways, among which—
"We should subdue our earthly affections to God. We must not love the creature as the Creator. My son, give me thy heart. When he removes our friends from the scenes of time (with a glance in my direction), we should resign ourselves to his will, remembering that the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away in mercy; that He is all in all; that He will never leave us nor forsake us; that He can never change or die."
As if that made any difference with the fact that his best treasures change or die!
"In conclusion, we infer from our text that our hearts should not be set upon earthly happiness. (Enlarged.)
"That the subject of heaven should be often in our thoughts and on our lips." (Enlarged.)
Of course I have not done justice to the filling up of the sermon; to the illustrations, metaphors, proof-texts, learning and eloquence; for, though Dr. Bland cannot seem to think outside of the old grooves, a little eloquence really flashes through the tameness of his style sometimes, and when he was talking about the harpers, etc., some of his words were well chosen. "To be drowned in light," I have somewhere read, "may be very beautiful; it is still to be drowned." But I have given the skeleton of the discourse, and I have given the sum of the impressions that it left on me, an attentive hearer. It is fortunate that I did not hear it while I was alone; it would have made me desperate. Going hungry, hopeless, blinded, I came back empty,
Dr. Bland is a good man. He had, I know, written that sermon with prayer. I only wish that he could be made to see how it glides over and sails splendidly away from wants like mine. But thanks be to God who has provided a voice to answer me out of the deeps.
Auntie and I walked home without any remarks (we overheard Deacon Quirk observe to a neighbour: "That's what I call a good gospel sermon, now!"), sent Faith away to PhŒbe, sat down in the parlour, and looked at each other.
"Well?" said I.
"I know it," said she.
Upon which we both began to laugh.
"But did he say the dreadful truth?"
"Not as I find it in my Bible."
"That it is probable, only probable that we shall recognise—"
"My child, do not be troubled about that. It is not probable, it is sure. If I could find no proof for it, I should none the less believe it, as long as I believe in God. He gave you Roy, and the capacity to love him. He has taught you to sanctify that love through love to Him. Would it be like Him to create such beautiful and unselfish loves,—most like the love of any type we know,—just for our threescore years and ten of earth? Would it be like Him to suffer two souls to grow together here, so that the separation of a day is pain, and then wrench them apart for all eternity? It would be what Madame de Gasparin calls, 'fearful irony on the part of God.'"
"But there are lost loves. There are lost souls."
"'How often would I have gathered you, and ye would not!' That is not his work. He would have saved both soul and love. They had their own way. We were speaking of His redeemed. The object of having this world at all, you know, is to fit us for another. Of what use will it have been, if on passing out of it we must throw by forever its gifts, its lessons, its memories? God links things together better than that. Be sure, as you are sure of Him, that we shall be ourselves in Heaven. Would you be yourself not to recognise Roy?—consequently, not to love Roy, for to love and be separated is misery, and heaven is joy."
"I understand. But you said you had other proof."
"So I have; plenty of it. If 'many shall come from the East and from the West, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' will they not be likely to know that they are with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? or will they think it is Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego?"
"What is meant by such expressions as 'risen together,' 'sitting together at the right hand of God,' 'sitting together in heavenly places'? If they mean anything, they mean recognitions, friendships, enjoyments. Did not Peter and the others know Moses when they
"But that was a miracle."
"They were risen dead, such as you and I shall be some day. The miracle consisted in their rising then and there. Moreover, did not the beggar recognise Abraham? and—well one might go through the Bible finding it full of this promise in hints or assertions, in parables or visions. We are 'heirs of God,' 'joint heirs with Christ'; having suffered with Him, we shall be 'glorified together.' Christ himself has said many sure things: 'I will come and receive you, that where I am, there ye may be.' 'I will that they be with me where I am.' Using, too, the very type of Godhead to signify the eternal nearness and eternal love of just such as you and Roy, as John and me, he prays: 'Holy Father, keep them whom Thou hast given me, that they may he one as we are.' There is one place, though, where I find what I like better than all the rest; you remember that old cry wrung from the lips of the stricken king,—'I shall go to him; but he will not return to me.'"
"I never thought before how simple and direct it is; and that, too, in those old blinded days."
"The more I study the Bible," she said, "and I study not entirely in ignorance of the commentators and the mysteries, the more perplexed I am to imagine where the current ideas of our future come from. They certainly are not in this book of gracious promises. That heaven which we heard about to-day was Dr. Bland's not God's. 'It's aye a wonderfu' thing to me,' as poor Lauderdale said, 'the way some preachers take it upon themselves to explain matters to the Almighty!'"
"But the harps and choirs, the throne, the white robes, are all in Revelation. Deacon Quirk would put his great brown finger on the verses, and hold you there triumphantly."
"Can't people tell picture from substance, a metaphor from its meaning? That book of Revelation is precisely what it professes to be,—a vision; a symbol. A symbol of something, to be sure, and rich with pleasant hopes, but still a symbol. Now, I really believe that a large proportion of Christian church-members, who have studied their Bible, attended Sabbath-schools, listened to sermons all their lives, if you could fairly come at their most definite idea of the place where they expect to spend eternity, would own it to be the golden city, with pearl gates, and jewels in the wall. It never occurs to them that if one picture is literal another must be. If we are to walk golden streets, how can we stand on a sea of glass? How can we 'sit on thrones'? How can untold millions of us 'lie in Abraham's bosom'?"
"But why have given us empty symbols? Why not a little fact?"
"They are not empty symbols. And why did God not give us actual descriptions of actual heavenly life, I don't trouble myself to
sure."
"If that is sure, the rest is of less importance;—yes. But Dr. Bland said an awful thing!"
"The quotation from a dead divine?"
"Yes. That there will be no separate interests, no thoughts to conceal."
"Poor good man! He has found out by this time that he should not have laid down nonsense like that, without qualification or demur, before a Bible-reading hearer. It was simply his opinion, not David's or Paul's, or John's, or Isaiah's. He had a perfect right to put it in the form of a conjecture. Nobody would forbid his conjecturing that the inhabitants of heaven are all deaf and dumb, or wear green glasses, or shave their heads, if he chose, provided he stated that it was conjecture, not revelation."
"But where does the Bible say that we shall have power to conceal our thoughts?—and I would rather be annihilated than to spend eternity with heart laid bare,—the inner temple thrown open to be trampled on by every passing stranger!"
"The Bible specifies very little about the minor arrangements of eternity in any way. But I doubt if, under any circumstances, it would have occurred to inspired men to inform us that our thoughts shall continue to be our own. The fact is patent on the face of things. The dead minister's supposition would destroy individuality at one fell swoop. "We should be like a man walking down a room lined with mirrors, who sees himself reflected in all sizes, colours, shades, at all angles and in all proportions, according to the capacity of the mirror, till he seems no longer to belong to himself, but to be cut up into ellipses and octagons and prisms. How soon would he grow frantic in such companionship, and beg for a corner where he might hide and hush himself in the dark. That we shall in a higher life be able to do what we cannot in this,—judge fairly of each other's moral worth,—is undoubtedly true. Whatever the Judgment Day may mean, that is the substance of it. But this promiscuous theory of refraction;—never! Besides, wherever the Bible touches the subject, it premises our individuality as a matter of course. What would be the use of talking, if everybody knew the thoughts of everybody else?"
"You don't suppose that people talk in heaven?"
"I don't suppose anything else. Are we to spend ages of joy, a company of mutes together? Why not talk?"
"I supposed we should sing,—but—"
"Why not talk as well as sing? Does not song involve the faculty of speech?—unless you would like to make canaries of us."
"Ye-es. Why, yes."
"There are the visitors at the beautiful Mount of Transfiguration
talk with each other and with Christ? Did not John talk with the angel who 'showed him those things'?"
"And you mean to say—"
"I mean to say that if there is such a thing as common sense, you will talk with Roy as you talked with him here,—only not as you talked with him here, because there will be no troubles nor sins, no anxieties nor cares to talk about; no ugly shades of cross words or little quarrels to be made up; no fearful looking-for of separation."
I laid my head upon her shoulder, and could hardly speak for the comfort that she gave me.
"Yes, I believe we shall talk and laugh and joke and play—"
"Laugh and joke in heaven?"
"Why not?"
"But it seems so—so—why, so wicked and irreverent and all that, you know."
Just then Faith, who, mounted out on the kitchen table, was preaching at Phoebe in comical mimicry of Dr. Bland's choicest intonations, laughed out like the splash of a little wave. The sound came in at the open door, and we stopped to listen till it had rippled away.
"There!" said her mother, "put that child, this very minute, with all her little sins forgiven, into one of our dear Lord's many mansions, and do you suppose that she would be any the less holy or less reverent for a laugh like that? Is he going to check all the sparkle and blossom of life when he takes us to himself? I don't believe any such thing. There were both sense and Christianity in what somebody wrote on the death of a humorous poet:—
—provided there was any hope that the poor fellow had gone to heaven; if not, it was bad philosophy and worse religion. Did not David dance before the Lord with all his might? A Bible which is full of happy battle-cries: 'Rejoice in the Lord! make a joyful noise unto him! Give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth!'—a Bible which exhausts its splendid wealth of rhetoric to make us understand that the coming life is a life of joy, no more threatens to make nuns than mutes of us. I expect that you will hear some of Roy's very old jokes, see the sparkle in his eye, listen to his laughing voice, lighten up the happy days as gleefully as you may choose, and that—"
Faith appeared upon the scene just then, with the interesting information that she had bitten her tongue; so we talked no more.
How pleasant—how pleasant this is! I never supposed before that God would let any one laugh in heaven.
I wonder if Roy has seen the President. Aunt Winifred says she does not doubt it. She thinks that all the soldiers must have crowded up to meet him, and "O," she says, "what a sight to see!"
Aunt Winifred has said something about going, but I cannot yet bear to hear of such a thing. She is to stay a while longer.
We have been over to-night to the grave. She proposed to go by herself, thinking, I saw, with the delicacy with which she always thinks, that I would rather not be there with another. Nor should I, nor could I. with any other than this woman. It is strange. I wished to go there with her. I had a vague unreasoning feeling that she would take away some of the bitterness of it, as she has taken the bitterness of much else.
It is looking very pleasant there now. The turf has grown fine and smooth. The low arborvitÆ hedge and knots of Norway spruce, that father planted long ago for mother, drop cool, green shadows that stir with the wind. My English ivy has crept about and about the cross. Roy used to say that he should fancy a cross to mark the spot where he might lie; I think he would like this pure, unveined marble. May-flowers cover the grave now, and steal out among the clover-leaves with a flush like sunrise. By and by there will be roses, and, in August, August's own white lilies.
We went silently over, and sat silently down on the grass, the field-path stretching away to the little church behind us, and beyond, in front, the slope, the flats, the river, the hills cut in purple distance melting far into the east. The air was thick with perfume. Golden bees hung giddily over the blush in the grass. In the low branches that swept the grave a little bird had built her nest.
Aunt Winifred did not speak to me for a time, nor watch my face. Presently she laid her hand upon my lap, and I put mine into it.
"It is very pleasant here," she said then, in her very pleasant voice.
"I meant that it should be," I answered, trying not to let her see my lips quiver. "At least it must not look neglected. I don't suppose it makes any difference to him."
"I do not feel sure of that."
"What do you mean?"
"I do not feel sure that anything he has left makes no 'difference to him."
"But I don't understand. He is in heaven. He would be too happy to care for anything that is going on in this woful world."
"Perhaps this is so," she said, smiling a sweet contradiction to her words, "but I don't believe it."
"What do you believe?"
"Many things that I have to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."
"I have sometimes wondered, for I cannot help it," I said, "whether he is shut off from all knowledge of me for all these years till I can go to him. It will be a great while. It seems hard. Roy would want to know something, if it were only a little, about me."
"I believe that he wants to know, and that he knows, Mary; though, since the belief must rest on analogy and conjecture, you need not accept it as demonstrated mathematics," she answered, with another smile.
"Roy never forgot me here!" I said, not meaning to sob.
"That is just it. He was not constituted so that he, remaining himself, Roy, could forget you. If he goes out into this other life forgetting, he becomes another than himself. That is a far more unnatural way of creeping out of the difficulty than to assume that he loves and remembers. Why not assume that? In fact, why assume anything else? Neither reason, nor the Bible, nor common sense, forbids it. Instead of starting with it as an hypothesis to be proved if we can, I lay it down as one of those probabilities for which Butler would say, 'the presumption amounts nearly to certainty'; and if any one can disprove it, I will hear what he has to say. There!" she broke off, laughing softly, "that is a sufficient dose of metaphysics for such a simple thing. It seems to me to he just here: Roy loved you. Our Father, for some tender, hidden reason, took him out of your sight for a while. Though changed much, he can have forgotten nothing. Being only out of sight, you remember, not lost, nor asleep, nor annihilated, he goes on loving. To love, must mean to think of, to care for, to hope for, to pray for, not less out of a body than in it."
"But that must mean—why, that must mean—"
"That he is near you. I do not doubt it."
The sunshine quivered in among the ivy-leaves, and I turned to watch it, thinking.
"I do not doubt it," she went on, speaking low,—"I cannot doubt that our absent dead are very present with us. He said, 'I am with you alway,' knowing the need we have of Him, even to the end of the world. He must understand the need we have of them. I cannot doubt it."
I watched her as she sat with her absent eyes turned eastward, and her peculiar look—I have never seen it on another face—as of one who holds a happy secret; and while I watched I wondered.
"There is a reason for it," she said, rousing as if from a pleasant dream,—"a good sensible reason, too, it strikes me independent of Scriptural or other proof."
"What is that?"
"That God keeps us briskly at work in this world."
I did not understand.
"Altogether too briskly, considering that it is a preparative world, to intend to put us from it into an idle one. What more natural than that we shall spend our best energies as we spent them here,—in comforting, teaching, helping, saving people whose very souls we love better than our own? In fact, it would be very unnatural if we did not."
"But I thought that God took care of us, and angels, like Gabriel and the rest, if I ever thought anything about it, which I am inclined to doubt."
"'God works by the use of means,' as the preachers say. Why not use Roy as well as Gabriel? What archangel could understand and reach the peculiarities of your nature as he could? or, even if understanding, could so love and bear with you? What is to be done? Will they send Roy to the planet Jupiter to take care of somebody else's sister?"
I laughed in spite of myself; nor did the laugh seem to jar upon the sacred stillness of the place. Her words were drawing away the bitterness, as the sun was blotting the dull, dead green of the ivy into its glow of golden colour.
"But the Bible, Aunt Winifred."
The Bible does not say a great deal on this point," she said, "but it does not contradict me. In fact, it helps me; and, moreover, it would uphold me in black and white if it weren't for one little obstacle."
"And that?"
"That frowning 'original Greek,' which Gail Hamilton denounces with her righteous indignation. No sooner do I find a pretty verse that is exactly what I. want, than up hops a commentator, and says, this isn't according to text, and means something entirely different; and Barnes says this, and Stuart believes that, and Olshausen has demonstrated the other, and very ignorant it is in you, too, not to know it! Here the other day I ferreted out a sentence in Revelation that seemed to prove beyond question that angels and redeemed men were the same; where the angel says to John, you know, 'Am I not of thy brethren the prophets?' I thought I had discovered a delightful thing which all the Fathers of the Church had overlooked, and went in great glee to your Uncle Calvin, to be told that something was the matter,—a noun left out, or some other unanswerable and unreasonable horror, I don't know what; and that it didn't mean that he was of thy brethren the prophets at all! You see, if it could be proved that the Christian dead become angels, we could have all that we need, direct from God, about—to use the beautiful old phrase—the communion of saints. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is filled with angels who are at work on earth. They hold sweet converse with Abraham in his tent. They are entrusted to save the soul of Lot. An angel hears the wail of Hagar. The beautiful feet of an angel brings the good tidings to maiden Mary. An angel's noiseless step guides Peter through the barred and bolted gate. Angels rolled the stone from the buried Christ, and angels sat there in the solemn morning,—O Mary! if we could have seen them! Then there is is that one question, direct, comprehensive,—we should not need anything else,—'Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation.' But you see it never seems to have entered those commentators' heads that all those beautiful things refer to any but a superior race of beings, like those from whose rank Lucifer fell."
"How stupid in them!"
"I take comfort in thinking so; but, to be serious, even admitting
a messenger. It applies to any servant of God, animate or inanimate. An east wind is as much an angel as Michael. Again, the generic terms, 'spirits,' 'gods,' 'sons of God,' are used interchangeably for saints and for angels. So, you see, I fancy that I find a way for you and Roy and me and all of us, straight into the shining ministry. Mary, Mary, wouldn't you like to go this very afternoon?"
She lay back in the grass with her face upturned to the sky, and drew a long breath, wearily. I did not think she meant me to hear it. I did not answer her, for it came over me with such a hopeless thrill, how good it would be to be taken to Roy, there by his beautiful grave with the ivy and the May-flowers and the sunlight and the clover-leaves round about; and that it could not be, and how long it was to wait,—it came over me so that I could not speak.
"There!" she said, suddenly rousing, "what a thoughtless, wicked thing it was to say! And I meant to give you only the good cheer of a cheery friend. No, I do not care to go this afternoon, nor any afternoon, till my Father is ready for me. Wherever he has most for me to do, there I wish,—yes, I think I wish to stay. He knows best."
After a pause, I asked again, "Why did He not tell us more about this thing,—about their presence with us? You see if I could know it!"
"The mystery of the Bible lies not so much in what it says, as in what it does not say," she replied. "But I suppose that we have been told all that we can comprehend in this world. Knowledge on one point might involve knowledge on another, like the links of a chain, till it stretched far beyond our capacity. At any rate, it is not for me to break the silence. That is God's affair. I can only accept the fact. Nevertheless, as Dr. Chalmers says: 'It were well for us all could we carefully draw the line between the secret things which belong to God and the things which are revealed and belong to us and to our children.' Some one else,—Whately, I think,—I remember to have noticed as speaking about these very subjects to this effect,—that precisely because we know so little of them, it is the more important that we 'should endeavour so to dwell on them as to make the most of what little knowledge we have.'"
"Aunt Winifred, you are such a comfort!"
"It needs our best faith," she said, "to bear this reticence of God. I cannot help thinking sometimes of a thing Lauderdale said,—I am always quoting him,—from 'Son of the Soil,' you remember: 'It's an awfu' marvel, beyond my reach, when a word of communication would make a' the difference, why it's no permitted, if it were but to keep a
"But then," she continued, "there is this to remember,—I may have borrowed the idea, or it may be my own,—that if we could speak to them, or they to us, there would be no death, for there would be no separation. The last, the surest, in some cases the only test of loyalty to God, would thus be taken away. Roman Catholic nature is human nature, when it comes upon its knees before a saint Many lives—all such lives as yours and mine—would become—"
"Would become what?"
"One long defiance to the First Commandment."
I cannot become used to such words from such quiet lips. Yet they gave me a curious sense of the trustworthiness of her peace. "Founded upon a rock," it seems to be. She has done what it takes a lifetime for some of us to do; what some of us go into eternity, leaving undone; what I am afraid I shall never do,—sounded her own nature. She knows the worst of herself, and faces it as fairly I believe, as anybody can do in this world. As for the best of herself, she trusts that to Christ, and he knows it, and we. I hope she, in her sweet humbleness, will know it some day.
"I suppose, nevertheless," she said, "that Roy knows what you are doing and feeling as well as, perhaps, better than he knew it three months ago. So he can help you without harming you."
I asked her, turning suddenly, how that could be, and yet heaven be heaven,—how he could see me suffer what I had suffered, could see me sometimes when I supposed none but God had seen me,—and sing on and be happy.
"You are not the first, Mary, and you will not be the last to ask that question. I cannot answer it, and I never heard of any one who could. I feel sure only of this,—that he would suffer far less to see you than to know nothing about you; and that God's power of inventing happiness is not to be blocked by an obstacle like this. Perhaps Roy sees the end from the beginning, and can bear the sight of pain for the peace that he watches coming to meet you. I do not know,—that does not perplex me now; it only makes me anxious for one thing."
"What is that?"
"That you and I shall not do anything to make them sorry."
"To make them sorry?"
"Roy would care. Roy would be disappointed to see you make life a hopeless thing for his sake, or to see you doubt his Saviour."
"Do you think that?"
"Some sort of mourning over sin enters that happy life. God himself 'was grieved' forty years long over his wandering people. Among the angels there has been 'silence,' whatever that mysterious pause may mean, just as there is joy over one sinner that repenteth; another of my proof-texts that, to show that they are allowed to keep us in sight."
"Then you think, you really think, that Roy remembers and loves and takes care of me; that he has been listening, perhaps, and is—why, you don't think he may be here?"
"Yes, I do. Here, close beside you all this time, trying to speak to you through the blessed sunshine and the flowers, trying to help you, and sure to love you,—right here, dear. I do not believe God means to send him away from you, either."
My heart was too full to answer her. Seeing how it was, she slipped away, and strolling out of sight with her face to the eastern hills, left me alone. And yet I did not seem alone. The low branches swept with a little soft sigh across the grave; the May-flowers wrapped me in with fragrance thick as incense; the tiny sparrow turned her soft eyes at me over the edge of the nest, and chirped contentedly; the "blessed sunshine" talked with me as it touched the edges of the ivy-leaves to fire. I cannot write it even here, how these things stole into my heart and hushed me. If I had seen him standing by the stainless cross, it would not have frightened or surprised me. There—not dead or gone, but there—it helps me, and makes me strong!
"Mamie! little Mamie!" O Roy, I will try to bear it all, if you will only stay!
The nearer the time has come for Aunt Winifred to go, the more it has seemed impossible to part with her. I have run away from the thought like a craven, till she made me face it this morning, by saying decidedly that she should go on the first of the week. I dropped my sewing; the work-basket tipped over, and all my spools rolled away under the chairs. I had a little time to think while I was picking them up.
"There is the rest of my visit at Norwich to be made, you know," she said, "and while I am there I shall form some definite plans for the summer; I have hardly decided what, yet I had better leave here by the seven o'clock train, if such an early start will not incommode you."
I wound up the last spool, and turned away to the window. There was a confused, dreary sky of scurrying clouds, and a cold wind was bruising the apple-buds. I hate a cold wind in May. It made me choke a little, thinking how I should sit and listen to it after she was gone,—of the old, blank, comfortless days that must come and go,—of what she had brought, and what she would take away. I was a bit faint, I think, for a minute. I had not really thought the prospect through, before.
"Mary," she said, "what's the matter? Come here."
I went over, and she drew me into her lap, and I put my arms about her neck. "I can not bear it," said I, "and that is the matter.'
She smiled, but her smile faded when she looked at me. And
"My dear! you are as bad as Faith when I put her to bed alone."
"But," said I," when Faith cries, you go to her, you know."
"Are you quite in earnest, Mary?" she asked, after a pause.
"You don't know very much about me, after all, and there is the child. It is almost an experiment, bringing two families into lifelong relations under one roof. If I could think it best you might repent your bargain."
"I am not 'a family,'" I said, feebly trying to laugh. "Aunt Winifred, if you and Faith only will make this your home, I can never thank you, never. I shall be entertaining my good angels, and that is the whole of it."
"I have had some thought of not going back," she said at last, in a low, constrained voice, as if she were touching something that gave her great pain, "for Faith's sake. I should like to educate her in New England, if—I had intended if we stayed to rent or buy a little home of our own somewhere, but I had been putting off a decision. We are most weak and most selfish sometimes when we think ourselves strongest and noblest, Mary. I love my husband's people. I think they love me. I was almost happy with them. It seemed as if I were carrying on his work for him. That was so pleasant!"
She put me down out of her arms and walked across the room.
"I will think the matter over," she said, by and by, in her natural tones, "and let you know to-night."
She went away up stairs then, and I did not see her again until to-night. I sent Faith up with her dinner and tea, judging that she would rather see the child than me. I observed when the dishes came down, that she had touched nothing but a cup of coffee.
I began to understand, as I sat alone in the parlour through the afternoon, how much I had asked of her. In my selfish distress at losing her, I had not thought of that. Faces that her husband loved, meadows and hills and sunsets that he has watched, the home where his last step sounded and his last word was spoken, the grave where she has laid him,—this last more than all,—call after her and cling to her with yearning closeness. To leave them, is to leave the last faint shadow of her beautiful past. It hurts, but she is too brave to cry out.
Tea was over, and Faith in bed, but still she did not come down. I was sitting by the window, watching a little crescent moon climb over the hills, and wondering whether I had better go up, when she came in and stood behind me, and said, attempting to laugh, "Very impolite in me to run off so, wasn't it? Cowardly too, I think. Well Mary?"
"Well, Auntie?"
"Have you not repented your proposition yet?"
"You would excel as an inquisitor, Mrs. Forceythe!"
"Then it shall be as you say; as long as you want us you shall have us,—Faith and me."
I turned to thank her, but could not when I saw her face. It was very pale; there was something inexpressibly sad about her mouth, and her eyelids drooped heavily, like one weary from a great struggle. Feeling for the moment like one guilty and ashamed before her, as if I had done her wrong, "It is going to be very hard for you," I said.
"Never mind about that," she answered quickly. "We will talk about that. I knew, though I did not wish to know, that it was best for Faith. Your hands about my neck have settled it. Where the work is there the labourer must be. It is quite plain now. I have been talking it over with them all the afternoon; it seems to be what they want."
"With them"? I started at the words; who had been in her lonely chamber? Ah, it is simply real to her. Who, indeed, but her Saviour and her husband?
She did not seem inclined to talk, and stole away from me presently, and out of doors; she was wrapped in her blanket shawl, and had thrown a shimmering white hood over her gray hair. I wondered where she could be going, and sat still at the window watching her. She opened and shut the gate softly; and, turning her face towards the churchyard, walked up the street and out of my sight. She feels nearer to him in the resting-place of the dead. Her heart cries after the grave by which she will never sit and weep again; on which she will never plant the roses any more. As I sat watching and thinking this, the faint light struck her slight figure and little shimmering hood again, and she walked down the street and in with steady step. When she came up and stood beside me, smiling, with the light knitted thing thrown back on her shoulders, her face seemed to rise from it as from a snowy cloud; and for her look,—I wish Raphael could have had it for one of his rapt Madonnas.
"Now, Mary," she said, with the sparkle back again in her voice, I am ready to be entertaining, and promise not to play the hermit again very soon. Shall I sit here on the sofa with you? Yes, my dear, I am happy, quite happy."
So then we took this new promise of home that has come to make my life, if not joyful, something less than desolate, and analysed it in its practical bearings. What a pity that all pretty dreams have to be analysed! I had some notion about throwing our little incomes into a joint family fund, but she put a veto to that; I suppose because mine is the larger. She prefers to take board for herself and Faith; but, if I know myself, she shall never be suffered to have the feeling of a boarder, and I will make her so much at home in my house that she will not remember that it is not her own. Her visit to Norwich she has decided to put off until the autumn, so that I shall have her to myself undisturbed all summer.
I have been looking at Roy's picture a long time, and wondering how he would like the new plan. I said something of the sort to her.
"Why put any 'would' in that sentence?" she said, smiling. "It belongs in the present tense."
"Then I am sure he likes it," I answered,—"he likes it," and I said the words over till I was ready to cry for rest in their sweet sound.
It is Roy's birthday. But I have not spoken of it. We used to make a great deal of these little festivals,—but it is of no use to write about that.
I am afraid I have been bearing it very badly all day. She noticed my face but said no thing till to-night. Mrs. Bland was down stairs, and I had come away alone up here in the dark. I heard her asking for me, but would not go down. By and by Aunt Winifred knocked, and I let her in.
"Mrs. Bland cannot understand why you don't see her, Mary," she said, gently. "You know you have not thanked her for those English violets that she sent the other day. I only thought I would remind you; she might feel a little pained.'
"I can't to-night,—not to:night, Aunt Winifred. You must excuse me to her somehow. I don't want to go down.
"Is it that you don't 'want to,' or is it that you can't?" she said, in that gentle, motherly way of hers, at winch I can never take offence. "Mary, I wonder if Roy would not a little rather that you would go down?"
It might have been Roy himself who spoke. I went down.
Aunt Winifred went to the office this morning, and met Dr. Bland, who walked home with her. He always likes to talk with her. A woman who knows something about fate, free-will, and foreknowledge absolute, who is not ignorant of politics, and talks intelligently of Agassiz's latest fossil, who can understand a German quotation, and has heard of Strauss and Neander, who can dash her sprightliness ably against his old dry bones of metaphysics and theology, yet never speak an accent above that essentially womanly voice of hers, is, I imagine, a phenomenon in his social experience.
I was sitting at the window when they came up and stopped at the gate. Dr. Bland lifted his hat to me in his grave way, talking the while; somewhat eagerly, too, I could see. Aunt Winifred answered him with a peculiar smile and a few low words that I could not hear.
"But, my dear madam," he said, "the glory of God, you see, the glory of God is the primary consideration."
"But the glory of God involves these lesser glories, as a sidereal
She came in smiling a little sadly, and stood by me, watching the minister walk over the hill.
"How much does that man love his wife and children?" she asked abruptly.
"A good deal. Why?"
"I am afraid that he will lose one of them then, before many more years of his life are past."
"What! he hasn't been telling you that they are consumptive or anything of the sort?"
"O dear me, no," with a merry laugh which died quickly away: "I was only thinking,—there is trouble in store for him; some intense pain,—if he is capable of intense pain,—which shall shake his cold, smooth theorising to the foundation. He speaks a foreign tongue when he talks of bereavement, of death, of the future life. No argument could convince him of that, though, which is the worst of it."
"He must think you shockingly heterodox."
"I don't doubt it. We had a little talk this morning, and he regarded me with an expression of mingled consternation and perplexity that was curious. He is a very good man. He is not a stupid man. I only wish that he would stop preaching and teaching things that he knows nothing about. He is only drifting with the tide, though," she added, "in his views of this matter. In our recoil from the materialism of the Romish Church, we have, it seems to me, nearly stranded-ourselves on the opposite shore. Just as, in a rebound from the spirit which would put our Saviour on a level with Buddha or Mahomet, we have been in danger of forgetting 'to begin as the Bible begins,' with his humanity. It is the grandeur of inspiration, that it knows how to balance truth."
It had been in my mind for several days to ask Aunt Winifred something, and, feeling in the mood, I made her take off her things and devote herself to me. My question concerned what we call the "intermediate state."
"I have been expecting that," she said; "what about it?"
"What is it?"
"Life and activity."
"We do not go to sleep, of course."
"I believe that notion is about exploded, though clear thinkers like Whately have appeared to advocate it. Where it originated, I do not know, unless from the frequent comparisons in the Scriptures of death with sleep, which refer solely, I am convinced, to the condition of body, and which are voted down by an overwhelming majority of decided statements relative to the consciousness, happiness, and tangibility of the life into which we immediately, pass."
"It is intermediate in some sense, I suppose."
"It waits between two other conditions,—yes; I think the drift of what we are taught about it leads to that conclusion. I expect to become at once sinless, but to have a broader Christian character many years hence; to be happy at once, but to be happier by and by; to find in myself wonderful new tastes and capacities, which are to be immeasurably ennobled and enlarged after the Resurrection, whatever that may mean."
"What does it mean?"
"I know no more than you, but you shall hear what I think, presently. I was going to say that this seems to be plain enough in the Bible. The angels took Lazarus at once to Abraham. Dives seems to have found no interval between death and consciousness of suffering."
"They always tell you that it is only a parable."
"But it must mean something. No story in the Bible has been pulled to pieces and twisted about as that has been. We are in danger of pulling and twisting all sense out of it. Then Judas, having hanged his wretched self, went to his own place. Besides, there was Christ's promise to the thief."
I told her that I had heard Dr. Bland say that we could not place much dependence on that passage, because "Paradise" did not necessarily mean heaven.
"But it meant living, thinking, enjoying; for 'To-day thou shalt be with me.' Paul's beautiful perplexed revery, however, would be enough if it stood alone; for he did not know whether he would rather stay in this world, or depart and be with Christ, which is far better. With Christ, you see; and His three mysterious days, which typify our intermediate state, were over then and he had ascended to his Father. Would it be 'far better' either to leave this actual tangible life throbbing with hopes and passions, to leave its busy, Christ-like working, its quiet joys, its very sorrows which are near and human, for a nap of several ages, or even for a vague, lazy, half-alive, disembodied existence?"
"Disembodied? I supposed, of course, that it was disembodied."
"I do not think so. And that brings us to the Resurrection. All the tendency of Revelation is to show that an embodied state is superior to a disembodied one. Yet certainly we who love God are promised that death will lead us into a condition which shall have the advantage of this: for the good apostle to die 'was gain.' I don't believe, for instance, that Adam and Eve have been wandering about in a misty condition all these thousands of years. I suspect that we have some sort of body immediately after passing out of this, but that there is to come a mysterious change, equivalent, perhaps, to a re-embodiment, when our capacities for action will be greatly improved, and that in some manner this new form will be connected with this 'garment by the soul laid by.'"
"Deacon Quirk expects to rise in his own entire, original body, after it has lain in the First Church cemetery a proper number of years, under a black slate headstone, adorned by a willow, and such
"Perhaps Deacon Quirk would admire a work of art that I found stowed away on the top of your Uncle Calvin's bookcases. It was an old woodcut—nobody knows how old—of an interesting skeleton rising from his grave, and, in a sprightly and modest manner, drawing on his skin, while Gabriel, with apoplectic cheeks, feet uppermost in the air, was blowing a good-sized tin trumpet in his ear! No; some of the popular notions of resurrection are simply physiological impossibilities, from causes 'too tedious to specify.' Imagine for instance, the resurrection of two Hottentots, one of whom has happened to make a dinner of the other some fine day. A little complication there! Or picture the touching scene, when that devoted husband, King Mausolas, whose widow had him burned and ate the ashes, should feel moved to institute a search for his body! It is no wonder that the infidel argument has the best of it, when we attempt to enforce a natural impossibility. It is worth while to remember that Paul expressly stated that we shall not rise in our entire earthly bodies. The simile which he used is the seed sown, dying in, and mingling with, the ground. How many of its original particles are found in the full-grown corn?"
"Yet you believe that something belonging to this is preserved for the completion of another?"
"Certainly. I accept God's statement about it, which is as plain as words can make a statement. I do not know, and I do not care to know, how it is to be effected. God will not be at a loss for away, any more than he is at a loss for a way to make his fields blossom every spring. For ought we know, some invisible compound of an annihilated body may hover, by a divine decree, around the site of death till it is wanted,—sufficient to preserve identity as strictly as a body can ever be said to preserve it; and stranger things have happened. You remember the old Mohammedan belief in the one little bone which is imperishable. Prof. Bushe's idea of our triune existence is suggestive, for a notion. He believed, you know, that it takes a material body, a spiritual body, and a soul to make a man. The spiritual body is enclosed within the material, the soul within the spiritual. Death is simply the slipping off of the outer body, as a husk slips off from its kernel. The deathless frame stands ready then for the soul's untrammelled occupation. But it is a waste of time to speculate over such useless fancies, while so many remain that will vitally affect our happiness."
It is singular; but I never gave a serious thought—and I have done some thinking about other matters—to my heavenly body, till that moment, while I sat listening to her. In fact, till Roy went, the Future was a miserable, mysterious blank, to be drawn on and on in eternal and joyless monotony, and to which, at times, annihilation seemed preferable. I remember, when I was a child, asking father once, if I were so good that I had to go to heaven, whether, after a hundred years, God would not let me "die out." More or less of the
"It must be nearly all 'suppose,'" she said, "for we are nowhere definitely told. But this is certain. They will be as real as these."
"But these you can see, you can touch."
"What would be the use of having a body that you can't see, and touch? A body is a body, not a spirit. Why should you not, having seen Roy's old smile and heard his own voice, clasp his hand again, and feel his kiss on your happy lips?
"It is really amusing," she continued, "to sum up the notions that good people—excellent people—even thinking people—have of the heavenly body. Vague visions of floating about in the clouds, of balancing—with a white robe on, perhaps—in stiff rows about a throne, like the angels in the old pictures, converging to an apex, or ranged in semi-circles like so many marbles. Murillo has one charming exception. I always take a secret delight in that little cherub of his, kicking the clouds, in the right-hand upper corner of the Immaculate Conception; he seems to be having a good time of it, in genuine baby-fashion. The truth is, that the ordinary idea, if sifted accurately, reduces our eternal personality to—gas.
"Isaac Taylor holds, that, as far as the abstract idea of spirit is concerned, it may just as reasonably be granite as ether.
"Mrs. Charles says a pretty thing about this. She thinks these 'super-spiritualised angels' very unsatisfactory beings, and that the heart returns with loving obstinacy to the young men in long white garments' who sat waiting in the sepulchre.
"Here again I cling to my conjecture about the word 'angel'; for then we should learn emphatically something about our future selves. 'As the angels in heaven,' or 'equal unto the angels,' we are told in another place,—that may mean simply what it says. At least, if we are to resemble them in the particular respect of which the words were spoken,—and that one of the most important which could well be selected,—it is not unreasonable to infer that we shall resemble them in others. 'In the Resurrection,' by the way, means, in that connection and in many others, simply future state of existence, without any reference to the time at which the great bodily change is to come.
"'But this is a digression,' as the novelists say. I was going to say, that it bewilders me to conjecture where students of the Bible have discovered the usual foggy nonsense about the corporeity of heaven. If there is anything laid down in plain statement, devoid of metaphor or parable, simple and unequivocal, it is the definite contradiction of all that. Paul, in his preface to that sublime apostrophe to death, repeats and reiterates it, lest we should make a mistake in his meaning. 'There are celestial bodies' 'It is raised a spiritual body.' 'There is a spiritual body.' 'It is raised in incorruption.' 'It is raised in glory.' 'It is raised in power.' Moses, too, when he came to the transfigured mount in glory, had as real a body as when he went into the lonely mount to die."
"But they will be different from these?"
"The glory of the terrestrial is one, the glory of the celestial another. Take away sin and sickness and misery, and that of itself would make difference enough."
"You do not suppose that we shall look as we look now?"
"I certainly do. At least, I think it more than possible that the human form divine,' or something like it, is to be retained. Not only from the fact that risen Elijah bore it; and Moses, who, if he had not passed through his resurrection, does not seem to have looked different from the other,—I have to use those two poor prophets on all occasions, but, as we are told of them neither by parable nor picture, they are important,—and that angels never appeared in any other, but because in sinless Eden, God chose it for Adam and Eve. What came in unmarred beauty direct from His hand cannot be unworthy of His other Paradise 'beyond the stars.' It would chime in pleasantly, too, with the idea of Redemption, that our very bodies, free from all the distortion of guilt, shall return to something akin to the pure ideal in which He moulded them. Then there is another reason, and stronger."
"What is that?"
"The human form has been born and dignified forever by Christ. And, further than that, He ascended to His Father in it, and lives there in it as human God to-day."
I had never thought of that and said so.
"Yes, with the very feet which trod the dusty road to Emmaus; the very wounded hands which Thomas touched, believing; the very lips winch ate of the broiled fish and honey-comb; the very voice which murmured 'Mary!' in the garden, and which told her that He ascended unto His Father and her Father, to His God and her God. He 'was parted from them,' and was 'received up into heaven.' His death and resurrection stand forever the great prototype of ours. Otherwise, what is the meaning of such statements as these: 'When He shall appear, we shall be like Him'; 'The first man (Adam) is of the earth; the second man is the Lord; as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also hear the image of the heavenly'? And what of this, when we are told that our 'vile bodies,' being changed, shall be fashioned 'like unto His glorious body'"
I asked her if she inferred from that, that we should have just such bodies as the freedom from pain and sin would make of these.
"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom," she said. 'There is no escaping that, even if I had the smallest desire to escape it, which I have not. Whatever is essentially earthly and temporary in the arrangements of this world will be out of place and unnecessary there. Earthly and temporary, flesh and blood certainly are."
"Christ said 'A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.'"
"A spirit hath not; and who ever said that it did? His body had something that appeared like them, certainly. That passage, by the way, has led some ingenious writer on the Chemistry of Heaven to
blood! I don't propose to spend my time over such investigations. Summing up the meaning of the story of those last days before the Ascension, and granting the shade of mystery which hangs over them, I gather this,—that the spiritual body is real, is tangible, is visible, is human, but that 'we shall be changed.' Some indefinable but thorough change had come over Him. He could withdraw Himself from the recognition of Mary, and from the disciples, whose 'eyes were holden,' as it pleased Him. He came and went through barred and bolted doors. He appeared suddenly in a certain place, without sound of footstep or flutter of garment to announce His approach. He vanished, and was not, like a cloud. New and wonderful powers had been given to Him, of which, probably, His little bewildered group of friends saw but a few illustrations."
"And He was yet man?"
"He was Jesus of Nazareth until the sorrowful drama of human life that He had taken upon Himself was thoroughly finished, from manger to sepulchre, and from sepulchre to the right hand of His Father.
"I like to wonder," she said, presently, "what we are going to look like and be like. Ourselves, in the first place. 'It is I Myself, Christ said. Then to be perfectly well, never a sense of pain or weakness,—imagine how much solid comfort, if one had no other, in being forever rid of all the ills that flesh is heir to! Beautiful, too, I suppose we shall be, every one. Have you never had that come over you, with a thrill of compassionate thankfulness, when you have seen a poor girl shrinking, as only girls can shrink, under the lifelong affliction of a marred face or form? The loss or presence of beauty is not as slight a deprivation or blessing as the moralists would make it out. Your grandmother, who was the most beautiful woman I ever saw, the belle of the county all her young days, and the model for artists' fancy sketching even in her old ones, as modest as a violet and as honest as the sunshine, used to have the prettiest little way when we girls were in our teens, and she thought that we must be lectured a bit on youthful vanity, of adding, in her quiet voice, smoothing down her black silk apron as she spoke, 'But still it is a thing to be thankful for, my dear, to have a comely countenance:"
"But to return to the track and our future bodies. We shall find them vastly convenient, undoubtedly, with powers of which there is no dreaming. Perhaps they will be so one with the soul that to will will be to do,—hindrance out of the question. I, for instance, sitting here by you, and thinking that I should like to be in Kansas, would be there. There is an interesting bit of a hint in Daniel about Gabriel, who, 'being caused to fly swiftly, touched him about the time of the evening oblation.'"
"But do you not make a very material kind of heaven out of such suppositions?"
"It depends upon what you mean by 'material.' The term does
'spiritual materialism.' He says in his sermon on the New Heavens and Earth,—which, by the way, you should read, and from which I wish a few more of our preachers would learn something, that we 'forget that on the birth of materialism, when it stood out in the freshness of those glories which the great Architect of Nature had impressed upon it, that then the 'morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' I do not believe in a gross heaven, but I believe in a reasonable one."
We have been devoting ourselves to feminine vanities all day out in the orchard. Aunt Winifred has been making her summer bonnet, and I some linen collars. I saw, though she said nothing, that she thought the crepe a little gloomy, and I am going to wear these in the mornings to please her.
She has an accumulation of work on hand, and in the afternoon I offered to tuck a little dress for Faith,—the prettiest pink barege affair, pale as a blush rose, and about as delicate. Faith, who had been making mud-pies in the swamp, and was spattered with black peat from curls to stockings, looked on approvingly, and wanted it to wear on a flag-root expedition to-morrow. It seemed to do me good to do something for somebody after all this lonely and—I suspect—selfish idleness.
I read a little of Dr. Chalmers to-day, and went laughing to Aunt Winifred with the first sentence :—"There is a limit to the revelations of the Bible about futurity, and it were a mental or spiritual trespass to go beyond it."
"Ah! but," she said, "look a little farther down."
And I read, "But while we attempt not to be 'wise above that which is written,' we should attempt, and that most studiously, to be wise up to that which is written."
It occurred to me to-day, that it was a noticeable fact, that, among all the visits of angels to this world of which we are told, no one seems to have discovered in any the presence of a dead friend. If redeemed men are subject to the same laws as they, why did such a thing never happen? I asked Aunt Winifred, and she said that the question reminded her of St. Augustine's lonely cry thirty years after the death of Monica: "Ah, the dead do not come back; for, had it been possible, there has not been a night when I should not have seen my mother!" There seemed to be two reasons, she said, why there should be no exceptions to the law of silence imposed between us and those who have left us; one of which was, that we should be overpowered with familar curiosity about them which nobody seems to have dared to express in the presence of angels, and the secrets of their life God has decreed that it is unlawful to utter.?
"But Lazarus, and Jairus's little daughter, and the dead raised at the Crucifixion,—what of them?" I asked.
"I cannot help conjecturing that they were suffered to forget their glimpse of spiritual life," she said. "Since their resurrection was a miracle, there might be a miracle throughout. At least, their lips must have been sealed, for not a word of their testimony has been saved. When Lazarus dined with Simon, after he had come back to life,—and of that feast we have a minute account in, I believe, every Gospel,—nobody seems to have asked, or he to have answered, any questions about it. The other reason is a sorrowfully sufficient one. It is that every lost darling has not gone to heaven. Of all the mercies that our Father has given, this blessed uncertainty, this long unbroken silence, may be the dearest. Bitterly hard for you and me, but what are thousands like you and me weighed against one who stands beside a hopeless grave? Think a minute what mourners there have been, and whom they have mourned! Ponder one such solitary instance as that of Vittoria Colonna wondering, through her widowed years, if she could ever be 'good enough' to join wicked Pescara in another world! This poor earth holds—God only knows how many, God make them very few!—Vittorias. Ah, Mary, what right have we to complain?"
To-night Aunt Winifred had callers,—Mrs. Quirk and (O Homer aristocracy!) the butcher's wife,—and it fell to my lot to put Faith to bed.
The little maiden seriously demurred. Cousin Mary was very good,—O yes, she was good enough, but her mamma was a great deal gooder; and why couldn't little peoples sit up till nine o'clock as well as big peoples, she should like to know! Finally, she came to the gracious conclusion that perhaps I'd do, made me carry her all the way up stairs, and dropped like a little lump of lead, half asleep, on my shoulder, before two buttons were unfastened.
Feeling under some sort of theological obligation to hear her say her prayers, I pulled her curls a little till she awoke, and went through with "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pway ve Lord," triumphantly. I supposed that was the end, but it seems that she has been also taught the Lord's Prayer, which she gave me promptly to understand.
"O, see here! That isn't all. I can say Our Father, and you've got to help me a lot!" This very soon became a self-evident proposition: but by our united efforts we managed, after tribulations manifold, to arrive successfully at "For ever 'n' ever 'n' ever 'n' A-men."
"Dear me," she said, jumping up with a yawn, "I think that's a dreadful long-tailed prayer,—don't you, Cousin Mary?"
"Now I must kiss mamma good night," she announced, when she was tucked up at last.
"But mamma kissed you good night before you came up."
"O, so she did. Yes, I 'member. Well, it's papa I've got to kiss, I knew there was somebody."
I looked at her in perplexity.
'Why, there!" she said, "in the upper drawer,—my pretty little papa in a purple frame. Don't you know?"
I went to the bureau-drawer, and found in a case of velvet a small ivory painting of her father. This I brought, wondering, and the child took it reverently and kissed the pictured lips.
"Faith," I said, as I laid it softly back, "do you always do this?"
"Do what? Kiss papa good night? O yes, I've done that ever since I was a little girl, you know I guess I've always kissed him pretty much. When I'm a naughty girl he feels real sorry. He's gone to heaven. I like him. O yes, and then, when I'm through kissing, mamma kisses him too."
I was in her room this afternoon while she was dressing. I like to watch her brush her beautiful gray hair; it quite alters her face to have it down; it seems to shrine her in like a cloud, and the outlines of her cheeks round out, and she grows young.
"I used to be proud of my hair when I was a girl," she said with a slight blush, as she saw me looking at her; "it was all I had to be vain of, and I made the most of it. Ah well! I was dark-haired three years ago.
"O you regular old woman!" she added, smiling at herself in the mirror, as she twisted the silver coils flashing through her fingers. "Well, when I am in heaven, I shall have my pretty brown hair again."
It seemed odd enough to hear that; then the next minute it did not seem odd at all, but the most natural thing in the world.
She said nothing to me about the anniversary, and, though it has been in my thoughts all the time, I said nothing to her. I thought that she would shut herself up for the day, and was rather surprised that she was about as usual, busily at work, chatting with me, and playing with Faith. Just after tea, she went away alone for a time, and came back a little quiet, but that was all. I was for some reason impressed with the feeling that she kept the day in memory, not so much as the day of her mourning, as of his release.
Longing to do something for her, yet not knowing what to do, I went into the garden while she was away, and, finding some carnations, that shone like stars in the dying light, I gathered them all, and took them to her room, and, filling my tiny porphyry vase, left them on the bracket, under the photograph of Uncle Forceythe that hangs by the window. When she found them, she called me, and kissed me.
"Thank you, dear," she said, "and thank God too, Mary, for me.
When I was in her room with the flowers, I passed the table on which her little Bible lay open. A mark of rich ribbon—a black ribbon—fell across the pages; it bore in silver text these words:—
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
"I thank thee, my God, the river of Lethe may indeed flow through the Elysian Fields,—it does not water the Christian's Paradise."
Aunt Winifred was saying that over to herself in a dreamy undertone this morning, and I happened to hear her.
"Just a quotation, dear," she said, smiling, in answer to my look of inquiry, "I couldn't originate so pretty a thing. Isn't it pretty?"
"Very; but I am not sure that I understand it."
"You thought that forgetfulness would be necessary to happiness?"
"Why,—yes; as far as I had ever thought about it; that is, after our last ties with this world are broken. It does not seem to me that I could be happy to remember all that I have suffered and all that I have sinned here."
"But the last of all the sins will be as if it had never been; Christ takes care of that. No shadow of a sense of guilt can dog you, or affect your relations to Him or your other friends. The last pain borne, the last tear, the last sigh, the last lonely hour, the last unsatisfied dream, forever gone by; why should not the dead past bury its dead?"
"Then why remember it?"
"'Save but to swell the sense of being blest.' Besides, forgetfulness of the disagreeable things of this life implies forgetfulness of the pleasant ones. They are all tangled together."
"To be sure. I don't know that I should like that."
"Of course you wouldn't. Imagine yourself in a state of being where you and Roy had lost your past; all that you had borne and enjoyed, and hoped and feared, together; the pretty little memories of your babyhood, and first 'half-days' at school, when he used to trudge along beside you,—little fellow! how many times I have watched him!—holding you tight by the apron-sleeve or hat string, or bits of fat fingers, lest you should run away or fall. Then the old Academy pranks, out of which you used to help each other; his little chivalry and elder-brotherly advice; the mischief in his eyes; some of the 'Sunday night talks'; the first novel that you read and dreamed over together; the college stories; the chats over the corn-popper by firelight; the earliest, earnest looking on into life together, its temptations conquered, its lessons learned, its disappointments faced together,—always you two,—would you like to, are you likely to forget all this?
"Roy might as well be not Roy, but a strange angel, if you should. Heaven will be not less heaven, but more, for this pleasant remembering. So many other and greater and happier memories will fill up the time then, that after years these things may—probably will—
"I have no doubt that you and I shall sit down some summer afternoon in heaven and talk over what we have been saying to-day, and laugh, perhaps, at all the poor little dreams we have been dreaming of what has not entered into the heart of man. You see it is certain to be so much better than anything that I can think of; which is the comfort of it. And Roy—-"
"Yes; some more about Roy, please."
"Supposing he were to come right into the room now,—and I slipped out,—and you had him all to yourself again—now, dear, don't cry, but wait a minute!" Her caressing hand fell on my hair. "I did not mean to hurt you, but to say that your first talk with him, after you stand face to face, may be like that.
"Remembering this life is going to help us amazingly, I fancy, to appreciate the next," she added, by way of period. "Christ seems to have thought so, when he called to the minds of those happy people what, in that unconscious ministering of lowly faith which may never reap its sheaf in the field where the seed was sown, they had not had the comfort of finding out before,—'I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me.' And to come again to Abraham in the parable, did he not say, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime hadst good things and Lazarus evil'?"
"I wonder what it is going to look like," I said, as soon as I could put poor Dives out of my mind.
"Heaven? Eye hath not seen, but I have my fancies. I think I want some mountains, and very many trees."
"Mountains and trees!"
"Yes; mountains as we see them at sunset and sunrise, or when the maples are on fire and there are clouds enough to make great purple shadows chase each other into lakes of light, over the tops and down the sides,—the ideal of mountains which we catch in rare glimpses, as we catch the ideal of everything. Trees as they look when the wind cooes through them on a June afternoon; elms or lindens or pines as cool as frost, and yellow sunshine trickling through on moss. Trees in a forest so thick that it shuts out the world, and you walk like one in a sanctuary. Trees pierced by stars, and trees in a bath of summer moons to which the thrill of 'Love's young dream' shall cling forever: But there is no end to one's fancies. Some water, too, I would like."
"There shall be no more sea."
"Perhaps not; though, as the sea is the great type of separation and of destruction, that may be only figurative. But I'm not particular about the sea, if I can have rivers and little brooks, and fountains of just the right sort; the fountains of this world don't please me generally. I want a little brook to sit and sing to
"Never too large to like to hear your mother sing, will you Faith?"
"O no," said Faith, who bobbed in and out again like a canary, just then,—"not unless I'm dreadful big, with long dresses and a waterfall, you know. I s'pose, maybe, I'd have to have little girls myself to sing to, then. I hope they'll behave better'n Mary Ann does. She's lost her other arm, and all her sawdust is just running out. Besides, Kitty thought she was a mouse, and ran down cellar with her, and she's all shooken up, somehow. She don't look very pretty."
"Flowers, too," her mother went on, after the interruption. "Not all amaranth and asphodel, but of variety and colour and beauty un-imagined; glorified lilies of the valley, heavenly tea-rose buds, and spiritual harebells among them. O, how your poor mother used to say,—you know flowers were her poetry,—coming in weak and worn from her garden in the early part of her sickness, hands and lap and basket full: 'Winifred, if I only supposed I could have some flowers in heaven I shouldn't be half so afraid to go!' I had not thought as much about these things then as I have now, or I should have known better how to answer her. I should like, if I had my choice, to have day-lilies and carnations fresh under my windows all the time."
"Under your windows?"
"Yes. I hope to have a home of my own,"
"Not a house?"
"Something not unlike it. In the Father's house are many mansions. Sometimes I fancy that those words have a literal meaning which the simple men who heard them may have understood better than we, and that Christ is truly 'preparing' my home for me. He must be there, too, you see,—I mean John."
I believe that gave me some thoughts that I ought not to have, and so I made no reply.
"If we have trees and mountains and flowers and books," she went on, smiling, "I don't see why not have houses as well. Indeed, they seem to me as supposable as anything can be which is guess-work at the best; for what a homeless, desolate sort of sensation it gives one to think of people wandering over the 'sweet fields beyond the flood' without a local habitation and a name. What could be done with the millions who, from the time of Adam, have been gathering there, unless they lived under the conditions of organised society? Organised society involves homes, not unlike the homes of this world.
"What other arrangement could be as pleasant, or could be pleasant at all? Robertson's definition of a church exactly fits. 'More united in each other, because more united in God.' A happy home is the happiest thing in the world. I do not see why it should not be in any world. I do not believe that all the little tendernesses of family ties are thrown by and lost with this life. In fact, Mary, I cannot think that anything which has in it the elements of permanency is to be lost, but sin. Eternity cannot be—it cannot be the
mine just the same. Unless Faith goes into a home of her own,—the little creature! I suppose she can't always be a baby.
"Do you remember what a pretty little wistful way Charles Lamb has of wondering about all this?
"'Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here,—the "sweet assurance of a look"? Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fish, and society, ......and candle-light and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and
irony itself,—do these things go out with life?'"
"Now Aunt Winifred!" I said, sitting up straight, "what am I to do with these beautiful heresies? If Deacon Quirk should hear!"
"I do not see where the heresy lies. As I hold fast by the Bible, I cannot be in much danger."
"But you don't glean your conjectures from the Bible."
"I conjecture nothing that the Bible contradicts. I do not believe as truth indisputable, anything that the Bible does not give me. But I reason from analogy about this, as we all do about other matters. Why should we not have pretty things in heaven? If this 'bright and beautiful economy' of sides and rivers, of grass and sunshine, of hills and valleys, is not too good for such a place as this world, will there be any less variety of the bright and beautiful in the next? There is no reason for supposing that the voice of God will speak to us in thunder-claps, or that it will not take to itself the thousand gentle, suggestive tongues of a nature built on the ruins of this, an unmarred system of beneficence.
"There is a pretty argument in the fact that just such sunrises, such opening of buds, such fragrant dropping of fruit, such bells in the brooks, such dreams at twilight, and such hush of stars, were fit for Adam and Eve, made holy man and woman. How do we know that the abstract idea of a heaven needs imply anything very much unlike Eden? There is some reason as well as poetry in 'Paradise Regained.' A 'new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.'"
"But how far is it safe to trust to this kind of argument?"
"Bishop Butler will answer you better than I. Let me see,—Isaac Taylor says something about that."
She went to the bookcase for his "Physical Theory of Another Life," and finding her place, showed me this passage:—
"If this often repeated argument from analogy is to be termed, as to the conclusions it involves, a conjecture merely, we ought then to abandon altogether every kind of abstract reasoning; nor will it be easy afterwards to make good any principle of natural theology. In truth, the very basis of reasoning is shaken by a scepticism so sweeping as this."
And in another place:—
"None need fear the consequences of such endeavours who have well learned the prime principle of sound philosophy, namely, not to allow the most plausible and pleasing conjectures to unsettle our convictions of truth .... resting upon positive evidence. If there be any who frown upon all such attempts, .... they would do well to consider, that although individually, and from the constitution of their minds, they may find it very easy to abstain from every path of excursive meditation, it is not so with others who almost irresistibly are borne forward to the vast field of universal contemplation,—afield from which the human mind is not to be barred, and which is better taken possession of by those who reverently bow to the authority of Christianity, than left open to impiety."
"Very good," I said, laying down the book. "But about those trees and houses, and the rest of your 'pretty things '? Are they to be like these? "
"I don't suppose that the houses will be made of oak and pine and nailed together, for instance. But I hope for heavenly types of nature and of art. Something that will be to us then what these art now. That is the amount of it. They may be as 'spiritual' as you please; they will answer all the purpose to us. As we are not spiritual beings yet, however, I am under the necessity of calling them by their earthly names. You remember Plato's old theory, that the ideal of everything exists eternally in the mind of God. If that is so,—and I do not see how it can be otherwise,—then whatever of God is expressed to us in this world by flower, or blade of grass, or human face, why should not that be expressed forever in heaven by something corresponding to flower, or grass, or human face? I do not mean that the heavenly creation will be less real than these, but more so. Their 'spirituality' is of such a sort that our gardens and forests and homes are but shadows of them.
"You don't know how I amuse myself at night thinking this all over before I go to sleep; wondering what one thing will be like, and another thing; planning what I should like; thinking that John has seen it all, and wondering if he is laughing at me because I know so little about it! I tell you, Mary, there's a 'deal o' comfort in't,' as PhŒbe says about her cup of tea."
Aunt Winifred has been hunting up a Sunday school class for herself and one for me; which is a venture that I never was persuaded into undertaking before. She herself is fast becoming acquainted with the poorer people of the town. I find that she is a thoroughly busy Christian, with a certain "week-day holiness" that is strong and refreshing, like a west wind. Church-going and conversations on heaven, by no means exhaust her vitality. She told me a pretty thing about her class; it happened the first Sabbath that she took it. Her scholars are young girls of from fourteen to eighteen years of age, children of church-members, most of them. She seemed to have taken their hearts by storm. She says, "They treated me very prettily, and made me love them at once."
Clo Bentley is in the class; Clo is a pretty, soft-eyed little creature, with a shrinking mouth, and an absorbing passion for music, which she has been too poor to gratify. I suspect that her teacher will make a pet of her. She says that in the course of her lesson, or, in her words,—
"While we were all talking together, somebody pulled my sleeve, and there was Clo in the corner, with her great brown eyes fixed on me. 'See here!' she said in a whisper, 'I can't be good! I would be good if I could only just have a piano!' 'Well, Clo, 'I said, 'if you will be a good girl, and go to heaven, I think you will have a piano there, and play just as much as you care to.'
"You ought to have seen the look the child gave me! Delight and fear and incredulous bewilderment tumbled over each other, as if I had proposed taking her into a forbidden fairy-land.
"'Why, Mrs. Forceythe! Why, they won't let anybody have a piano up there! not in heaven?'
"I laid down the question-book, and asked what kind of place she supposed that heaven was going to be.
"'O,' she said, with a dreary sigh, 'I never think about it when I can help it. I suppose we shall all just stand there!'
"And you?" I asked of the next, a bright girl with snapping eyes.
"'Do you want me to talk good, or tell the truth?' she answered me. Having been given to understand that she was not expected to 'talk good' in my class, she said, with an approving, decided nod: 'Well, then! I don't think it's going to be anything nice anyway. No, I don't! I told my last teacher so, and she looked just as shocked, and said I never should go there as long as I felt so. That made me mad, and I told her I did'nt see but I should be as well off in one place as another, except for the fire.'
"A silent girl in the corner began at this point to look interested. 'I always supposed,' said she, 'that you just floated round in heaven—you know—all together—something like ju-jube paste!'
"Whereupon I shut the question-book entirely, and took the talking to myself for a while.
"'But I never thought it was anything like that,' interrupted little Clo, presently, her cheeks flushed with excitement. 'Why, I should like to go, if it is like that! I never supposed people talked, unless it was about converting people, and saying your prayers, and all that.'
"Now, weren't those ideas Facts.
We took a trip to-day to East Homer for butter. Neither angels nor principalities could convince PhŒbe that any butter but "Stephen David's" might, could, would, or should be used in this family. So to Mr. Stephen David's, a journey of four miles, I meekly betake myself at stated periods in the domestic year, burdened with directions about firkins and half-firkins, pounds and half-pounds, salt and no salt, churning and "working-over;" some of which I remember and some of which I forget, and to all of which PhŒbe considers mo sublimely incapable of attending.
The afternoon was perfect, and we took things leisurely, letting the reins swing from the hook,—an arrangement to which Mr. Tripp's old gray was entirely agreeable,—and, leaning back against the buggy-cushions, wound along among the strong, sweet pine-smells, lazily talking or lazily silent, as the spirit moved, and as only two people who thoroughly understand and like each other can talk or be silent.
We rode home by Deacon Quirk's, and, as we jogged by, then broke upon our view a blooming vision of the Deacon himself, at work in his potato field with his son and heir, who, by the way, has the reputation of being the most awkward fellow in the township.
The amiable church-officer, having caught sight of us, left his work and coming up to the fence "in rustic modesty unscared," guiltless of coat or vest, his calico shirt-sleeves rolled up to his huge brown elbows, and his dusty straw hat flapping in the wind, rapped on the rails with his hoe-handle as a sign for us to stop.
"Are we in a hurry?" I asked, under my breath.
"O no," said Aunt Winifred. "He has somewhat to say unto me, I see by his eyes. I have been expecting it. Let us hear him out. Good afternoon, Deacon Quirk."
"Good afternoon, ma'am. Pleasant day?"
She assented to the statement, novel as it was.
"A very pleasant day," repeated the Deacon, looking for the first time in his life, to my knowledge, a little undecided as to what he should say next. "Remarkable fine day for riding. In a hurry?"
"Well, not especially. Did you want anything of me?"
"You're a church-member, aren't you, ma'am?' asked the Deacon, abruptly.
"I am."
"Orthodox?"
"O yes," with a smile. "You had a reason for asking?"
"Yes, ma'am; I had, as you might say, a reason for asking."
The Deacon laid his hoe on the top of the fence, and his arms across it, and pushed his hat on the back of his head in a becoming and argumentative manner.
"I hope you don't consider that I'm taking liberties if I have a little religious conversation with you, Mrs. Forceythe."
"It is no offence to me if you are," replied Mrs. Forceythe, with a twinkle in her eye; but both twinkle and words glanced off from the Deacon.
"My wife was telling me last night," he began, with an ominous cough, "that her niece, Clotildy Bentley—Moses Bentley's daughter you know, and one of your sentimental girls that reads poetry, and is easy enough led away by vain delusions and false doctrine—was under your charge at Sunday school. Now Clotildy is intimate with my wife,—who is her aunt on her mother's side, and always tries to do her duty by her,—and she told Mrs. Quirk what you'd been a saying to those young minds on the Sabbath."
He stopped, and observed her impressively, as if he expected to see the guilty blushes of arraigned heresy covering her amused attentive face.
"I hope you will pardon me, ma'am, for repeating it, but Clotildy said that you told her she should have a pianna in heaven. A pianna, ma'am!"
"I certainly did," she said quietly.
"You did? Well, now, I didn't believe it, nor I wouldn't believe it, till I'd asked you! I thought it warn't more than fair that I should ask you, before repeating it, you know. It's none of my business, Mrs. Forceythe, any more than that I take a general interest in the spiritooal welfare of the youth of our Sabbath school; but I am very much surprised! I am very much surprised!"
"I am surprised that you should be, Deacon Quirk. Do you believe that God would take a poor disappointed girl like Clo, who has been all her life here forbidden the enjoyment of a perfectly innocent taste, and keep her in His happy heaven eternal years, without finding means to gratify it? I don't."
"I tell Clotildy I don't see what she wants of a pianna-forte," observed "Clotildy's" uncle, sententiously. "She can go to singin' school, and she's been in the choir ever since I have, which is six years come Christmas. Besides, I don't think it's our place to speckylate on the mysteries of the heavenly spere. My wife told her that she musn't believe any such things as that, which were very irreverent, and contrary to the Scriptures, and Clo went home crying. She said: 'It was so pretty to think about.' It is very easy to impress these delusions of fancy on the young."
"Pray, Deacon Quirk," said Aunt Winifred, leaning earnestly forward in the carriage, "will you tell me what there is 'irreverent' or 'un-scriptural' in the idea that there will be instrumental music in heaven?"
"Well," replied the Deacon after some consideration, "come to think of it, there will be harps, I suppose. Harpers harping with their harps on the sea of glass. But I don't believe there will be any piannas. It's a dreadfully material way to talk about that glorious world, to my thinking."
"If you could show me wherein a harp is less 'material' than a piano, perhaps I should agree with you."
Deacon Quirk looked rather nonplussed for a minute.
"What do you suppose people will do in heaven?" she asked again.
"Glorify God," said the Deacon, promptly recovering himself—"glorify God, and sing Worthy the Lamb! We shall be clothed in white robes with palms in our hands, and bow before the Great White Throne. We shall be engaged in such employments as befit sinless creatures in a spiritooal state of existence."
"Now, Deacon Quirk," replied Aunt Winifred, looking him over from head to foot,—old straw hat, calico shirt, blue overalls, and cowhide boots, coarse, work-wom hands, and "narrow forehead braided tight,"—"just imagine yourself, will you? taken out of this life this minute, as you stand here in your potato-field (the Deacon changed his position with evident uneasiness), and put into another life,—not anybody else, but yourself, just as you left this spot,—and do you honestly think that you should be happy to go and put on a white dress and stand still in a choir with a green branch in one hand and a singing-book in the other, and sing and pray and never do anything but sing and pray, this year, next year, and every year for ever?"
"We-ell," he replied, surprised into a momentary flash of carnal candour, "I can't say that I shouldn't wonder for a minute, maybe, how Abinadab would ever get those potatoes hoed without me.—Abina-dab! go back to your work!"
The graceful Abinadab had sauntered up during the conversation, and was listening, hoe in hand and mouth open. He slunk away when his father spoke, but came up again presently on tiptoe when Aunt Winifred was talking. There was an interested, intelligent look about his square and pitifully embarrassed face which attracted my notice.
"But then," proceeded the Deacon, reinforced by the sudden recollection of his duties as a father and a church-member, "that couldn't be a permanent state of feeling, you know. I expect to be transformed by the renewing of my mind to appreciate the glories of the New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. That's what I expect, ma'rm. Now I heerd that you told Mrs. Bland, or that Mary told her, or that she heerd it someway, that you said you supposed there were trees and flowers and houses and such in heaven. I told my wife I thought your deceased husband was a Congregational minister, and I didn't believe you ever said it; but that's the rumour."
Without deeming it necessary to refer to her "deceased husband," Aunt Winifred replied that "rumour" was quite right.
"Well!" said the Deacon, with severe significance, "I believe in a spiritooal heaven."
I looked him over again,—hat, hoe, shirt, and all; scanned his obstinate old face with its stupid, good eyes and animal mouth. Then I glanced at Aunt Winifred as she leaned forward in the afternoon light; the white finely cut woman, with her serene smile and rapt, saintly eyes,—every inch of her, body and soul refined, not only by birth and training, but by the long nearness of her heart to Christ.
"It is distinctly stated in the Bible, by which, I suppose we shall both agree," said Aunt Winifred, gently, "that there shall be a new earth, as well as new heavens. It is noticeable, also, that the descriptions of heaven, although a series of metaphors, are yet singularly earthlike and tangible ones. Are flowers and skies and trees less 'spiritual' than white dresses and little palm-branches? In fact, where are you going to get your little branches without trees? What could well be more suggestive of material modes of living, and material industry, than a city marked into streets and alleys, paved solidly with gold, walled in and barred with gates whose jewels are named and counted, and whose very length and breadth are measured with a celestial surveyor's chain?"
"But I think we'd ought to stick to what the Bible says," answered the Deacon, stolidly. "If it says golden cities and doesn't say flowers, it means cities and doesn't mean flowers. I dare say you're a good woman, Mrs. Forceythe, if you do hold such oncommon doctrine, and I don't doubt you mean well enough, but I don't think that we ought to trouble ourselves about these mysteries of a future state. I'm willing to trust them to God!"
The evasion of a fair argument by this self-sufficient spasm of piety was more than I could calmly stand, and I indulged in a subdued explosion.—Auntie says it sounded like Fourth of July crackers touched off under a wet barrel.
"Deacon Quirk! do you mean to imply that Mrs. Forceythe does not trust it to God? The truth is, that the existence of such a world as heaven is a fact from which you shrink. You know you do! She has twenty thoughts about where you have one; yet you set up a claim to superior spirituality!"
"Mary, Mary, you are a little excited, I fear. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth!'
The relevancy of this last, I confess myself incapable of perceiving, but the good man seemed to be convinced that he had made a point, and we rode off leaving him under that blissful delusion.
"If he weren't a good man!" I sighed, "But he is, and I must respect him for it."
"Of course you must; nor is he to blame that he is narrow and rough. I should scarcely have argued as seriously as I did with him, but that, as I fancy him to be a representative of a class, I wanted to try an experiment. Isn't he amusing, though? He is precisely one of Mr. Stopford Brook's men 'who can understand nothing which is original.'"
"Are there, or are there not, more of such men in our church than in others?"
"Not more proportionately to numbers. But I would not have them thinned out. The better we do Christ's work, the more of uneducated, neglected, or debased mind will be drawn to try and
cultivators, scattering their golden gifts on wayside ground."
"Now take Deacon Quirk," I suggested, when we had ridden along a little way under the low, green arches of the elms. "and put him into heaven as you proposed, just as he is, and what is he going to do with himself? He can dig potatoes and sell them without cheating, and give generously of their proceeds to foreign missions; but take away his potatoes, and what would become of him? I don't know a human being more incapacitated to live in such a heaven as he believes in."
"Very true, and a good, common-sense argument against such a heaven. I don't profess to surmise what will be found for him to do, beyond this,—that it will be some very palpable work that he can understand. How do we know that he would not be appointed guardian of his poor son here, to whom I suspect he has not been all that father might be in this life, and that he would not have his body as well as his soul to look after, his farm as well as his prayers? to him might be committed the charge of the dews and the rains and the hundred unseen influences that are at work on this very potato-field."
"But when his son has gone in his turn, and we have all gone, and there are no more potato-fields? An Eternity remains."
"You don't know that there wouldn't be any potato-fields; there may be some kind of agricultural employments even then. To whomsoever a talent is given, it will be given him wherewith to use it. Besides, by that time the good Deacon will be immensely changed. I suppose that the simple transition of death, which rids him of sin and of grossness, will not only wonderfully refine him, but will have its effect upon his intellect."
"If a talent is given, use will be found for it? Tell me some more about that."
"I fancy many things about it; but of course can feel sure of only the foundation principle. This life is a great school-house. The wise Teacher trains in us such gifts as, if we graduate honourably, will be of most service in the perfect manhood and womanhood that come after. He sees, as we do not, that a power is sometimes best trained by repression. 'We do not always lose an advantage when we dispense with it,' Goethe says. But the suffocated lives, like little Clo's there, make my heart ache sometimes. I take comfort in thinking how they will bud and blossom up in the air, by and by. There are a great many of them. We tread them underfoot in our careless stepping now and then, and do not see that they have not the elasticity to rise from our touch. 'Heaven may be a place for those who failed on earth,' the Country Parson says."
"Then there will be air enough for all?"
"For all; for those who have had a little bloom in this world, as well. I suppose the artist will paint his pictures, the poet sing his happy songs, the orator and author will not find their talents hidden in the eternal darkness of a grave; the sculptor will use his beautiful gift in the moulding of some heavenly Carrara; as 'well the singer as the player on instruments shall be there.' Christ said a thing that has grown on me with new meanings lately :—'He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' It, you see,—not another man's life, not a strange compound of powers and pleasures, but his own familiar aspirations. So we shall best 'glorify God,' not less there than here, by doing it in the peculiar way that He himself marked out for us. But—ah, Mary, you see it is only the life 'lost' for His sake that shall be so beautifully found. A great man never goes to heaven because he is great. He must go, as the meanest of his fellow-sinners go, with face towards Calvary, and every golden treasure used for love of Him who showed him how."
"What would the old Pagans—and modern ones, too, for that matter—say to that? Wasn't it Tacitus who announced it as his belief, that immortality was granted as a special gift to a few superior minds? For the people who persisted in making up the rest of the world, poor things! as it could be of little consequence what became of them, they might die as the brute dieth."
"It seems an unbearable thing to me sometimes," she went on, the wreck of a gifted soul. A man who can be, if he chooses, as much better and happier than the rest of us as the ocean reflects more sky than a millpond, must also be, if he chooses, more wicked and more miserable. It takes longer to reach sea shells than river-pebbles. I am compelled to think, also, that intellectual rank must in heaven bear some proportion to goodness. There are last and there are first that shall have changed places. As the tree falleth, there shall it lie, and with that amount of holiness of which a man leaves this life the possessor, he must start in another. I have seen great thinkers, 'foremost men' in science, in theology, in the arts, who, I solemnly believe, will turn aside in heaven,—and will turn humbly and heartily,—to let certain day-labourers and paupers whom I have known go up before them as kings and priests unto God."
"I believe that. But I was going to ask,—for poor creatures like your respected niece, who hasn't a talent, nor even a single absorbing taste, for one thing above another thing,—what shall she do?"
"Whatever she liketh best; something very useful, my dear, don't be afraid, and very pleasant. Something, too, for which this life has fitted you; though you may not understand how that can be, better than did poor Heine on his 'matrazzen-gruft,' reading all the books that treated of his disease. 'But what good this reading is to do me I don't know,' he said, 'except that it will qualify me to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth about diseases of the spinal marrow."
"I don't know how many times I have thought of—I believe it?
"Yes, they will be the active, outgoing, generous elements of our nature that will be brought into use then, rather than the self-centred and dreamy ones. Though I suppose that we shall read in heaven,—being influenced to be better and nobler by good and noble teachers of the pen, not less there than here."
"O think of it! To have books, and music,—and pictures?"
"All that Art, 'the handmaid of the Lord,' can do for us, I have no doubt will be done. Eternity will never become monotonous. Variety without end, charms unnumbered within charms, will be devised by Infinite ingenuity to minister to our delight. Perhaps,—this is just my fancying,—perhaps there will be whole planets turned into galleries of art, over which we may wander at will; or into orchestral halls where the highest possibilities of music will be realised to singer and to hearer. Do you know, I have sometimes had a flitting notion that music would be the language of heaven. It certainly differs in some indescribable manner from the other arts. We have most of us felt it in our different ways. It always seems to me like the cry of a great sad life dragged to use in this world against its will. Pictures and statues and poems fit themselves to their work more contentedly. Symphony and song struggle in fetters. That sense of conflict is not good for me. It is quite as likely to harm as to help. Then perhaps the mysteries of sidereal systems will be spread out like a child's map before us. Perhaps we shall take journeys to Jupiter and to Saturn and to the glittering haze of nebulas, and to the sight of ruined worlds whose 'extinct light is yet travelling through space.' Occupation for explorers there, you see!"
"You make me say with little Clo, 'O, why, I want to go!' every time I hear you talk. But there is one thing,—you spoke of families living together."
"Yes."
"And you spoke of—your husband. But the Bible——"
"Says there shall be no marrying nor giving in marriage. I know that. Nor will there be such marrying or giving in marriage as there is in a world like this. Christ expressly goes on to state, that we shall be as the angels in heaven. How do we know what heavenly unions of heart with heart exist among the angels? It leaves me margin enough to live and be happy with John forever, and it holds many possibilities for the settlement of all perplexing questions brought about by the relations of this world. It is of no use to talk much about them. But it is on that very verse that I found my unshaken belief that they will be smoothed out in some natural and happy way, with which each one shall be content."
"But O, there is a great gulf fixed; and on one side one, and on the other another, and they loved each other."
Her face paled,—it always pales, I notice, at the mention of this mystery,—but her eyes never lost by a shade their steadfast trust.
"Mary, don't question me about that. That belongs to the un-
think I could leave it to him even if he brought it for me myself to face. I feel sure that he will make it all come out right. Perhaps He will be so dear to us, that we could not love any one who hated him. In some way the void must be filled, for he shall wipe away tears. But it seems to me that the only thought in which there can be any rest, and in it there can, is this: that Christ, who loves us even as his Father loves him, can be happy in spite of the existence of a hell. If it is possible to him, surely he can make it possible to us."
"Two things that he has taught us," she said after a silence, "give me beautiful assurance that none of these dreams with which I help myself can be beyond his intention to fulfil. One is, that eye hath not seen it, nor ear heard it, nor the heart conceived it,—this lavishness of reward which he is keeping for us. Another is, that 'I shall be satisfied when I awake.'"
"With his likeness?"
"With his likeness. And about that I have other things to say."
But Old Gray stopped at the gate, and Phoebe was watching for her butter, and it was no time to say them then.
Aunt Winifred has connected herself with our church. I think it was rather hard for her, breaking the last tie that bound her to her husband's people; but she had a feeling, that if her work is to be done and her days ended here, she had better take up all such little threads of influence to make herself one with us.
To-day what should Deacon Quirk do but make a solemn call on Mrs. Forceythe, for the purpose of asking—and this with a hint that he wished he had asked before she became a member of the Homer First Congregational Church—whether there were truth in the rumours, now rife about town, that she was a Swedenborgian!
Aunt Winifred broke out laughing, and laughed merrily. The Deacon frowned.
"I used to fancy that I believed in Swedenborg," she said, as soon as she could sober down a little.
The Deacon pricked up his ears, with visions of excommunications and councils reflected on every feature.
"Until I read his books," she finished.
"Oh!" said the Deacon. He waited for more, but she seemed to consider the conversation at an end.
"So then you—if I understand—are not a Swedenborgian, ma'rm?"
"If I were, I certainly should have had no inducement to join myself to your church," she replied, with gentle dignity. "I believe, with all my heart, in the same Bible and the same creed that you believe in, Deacon Quirk."
"And you live your creed, which all such genial Christians do not find it necessary to do," I thought, as the Deacon in some perplexity took his departure, and she returned with a smile to her sewing.
I suppose the call came about in this way. We had the sewing-circle here last week, and just before the lamps were lighted, and when people had dropped their work to group and talk in the corners, Meta Tripp came up with one or two other girls to Aunt Winifred, and begged "to hear some of those queer things people said she believed about heaven." Auntie is never obtrusive with her views on this or any other matter, but, being thus urged, she answered a few questions that they put to her, to the extreme scandal of one or two old ladies, and the secret delight of the rest.
"Well," said little Mrs. Bland, squeezing and kissing her youngest, who was at that moment vigorously employed in sticking very long darning-needles into his mother's water-fall, "I hope there'll be a great many babies there. I should be perfectly happy if I always could have babies to play with!"
The look that Aunt Winifred shot over at me was worth seeing. She merely replied, however, that she supposed all our "highest aspirations,"—with an indescribable accent to which Mrs. Bland was safely deaf,—if good ones, would be realised; and added, laughing, that Swedenborg said that the babies in heaven—who outnumber the grown people—will be given into the charge of those women especially fond of them.
"Swedenborg is suggestive, even if you can't accept what seem to the uninitiated to be his natural impossibilities," she said, after we had discussed Deacon Quirk awhile. "He says a pretty thing, too, occasionally. Did I ever read you about the houses?" She had not and I wished to hear, so she found the book on Heaven and Hell and read;—
"As often as I have spoken with the angels mouth to mouth, so often I have been with them in their habitations; their habitations are altogether like the habitations on earth which are called houses, but more beautiful; in them are parlours, rooms, and chambers in great numbers; there are also courts, and round about are gardens, shrubberies, and fields. Palaces of heaven have been seen, which were so magnificent that they could not be described; above, they glittered as if they were of pure gold, and below, as if they were of precious stones; one palace was more splendid than another; within, it was the same, the rooms were ornamented with such decorations as neither words nor sciences are sufficient to describe. On the side which looked to the south there were paradises, where all things in like manner glittered, and in some places the leaves were as of silver, and the fruits as of gold; and the flowers on their beds presented by colours as it were rainbows; at the boundaries again were palaces, in which the view terminated."
Aunt Winifred says that our hymns, taken altogether, contain the worst and the best pictures of heaven that we have in any branch of literature.
"It seems to me incredible," she says, "that the Christian Church
'Where congregations ne'er break up, And Sabbaths have no end.'
The dullest preachers are sure to give it out, and that when there are the greatest number of restless children wondering when it will be time to go home. It is only within ten years that modern hymn-books have altered it, returning in part to the original.
"I do not think we have chosen the best parts of that hymn for our 'service of song.' You never read the whole of it? You don't know how pretty it is! It is a relief from the customary palms and choirs. One's whole heart is glad of the outlet of its sweet refrain,—
'Would God that I were there!'
before one has half read it. You are quite ready to believe that
pleasure every way.'
Listen to this:—
* * * * *
'Our sweet is mixed with bitter gall, Our pleasure is but pain, Our joys scare last the looking on, Our sorrows still remain. 'But there they live in such delight, Such pleasure and such play,As that to them a thousand years Doth seem as yesterday.'
And this:—
I tell you we may learn something from that grand old Catholic singer. He is far nearer to the Bible than the innovators on his MSS. Do you not notice how like his images are to the inspired ones, and yet how pleasant and natural is the effect of the entire
Aunt Winifred was weeding her day-lilies this morning, when the gate creaked timidly, and then swung noisily, and in walked Abinadab Quirk, with a bouquet of China pinks in the button-hole of his green-gray linen coat. He had taken evident pains to smarten himself up a little, for his hair was combed into two-horizontal dabs over his ears, and the green-gray coat and blue-checked shirt-sleeves were quite clean; but he certainty is the most uncouth specimen of six feet five that it has ever been my privilege to behold. I feel sorry for him, though. I heard Meta Tripp laughing at him in Sunday school the other day,—"Quadrangular Quirk," she called him, a little too loud, and the poor fellow heard her. He half turned, blushing fiercely; then slunk down in his corner with as pitiable a look as is often seen upon a man's face.
He came up to Auntie awkwardly,—a part of the scene I saw from the window, and the rest she told me,—head hanging, and the tiny bouquet held out.
"Clo sent these to you," he stammered out,—"my cousin Clo. I was coming 'long, and she thought, you know,—she'd get me, you see, to—to—that is, to—bring them. She sent her—that is—let me see. She sent her respect—ful—respectful—no, her love; that was it. She sent her love 'long with 'em."
Mrs. Forceythe dropped her weeds, and held out her white, shapely hands, wet with the heavy dew, to take the flowers.
"O, thank you! Clo knows my fancy for pinks. How kind in you to bring them! Won't you sit down a few moments? I was just going to rest a little. Do you like flowers?"
Abinadab eyed the white hands, as his huge fingers just touched them, with a sort of awe; and, sighing, sat down on the very edge of the garden bench beside her. After a singular variety of efforts to take the most uncomfortable position of which he was capable, he succeeded to his satisfaction, and, growing then somewhat more at his ease, answered her question.
"Flowers are sech gassy things . They just blow out and that's the end of 'em. I like machine-shops best."
"Ah! well, that is a very useful liking. Do you ever invent machinery yourself?"
"Sometimes," said Abinadab, with a bashful smile. "There's a little improvement of mine for carpet-sweepers up before the patent-office now. Don't know whether they'll run it through. Some of the chaps I saw in Boston told me they thought they would do't in time; it takes an awful sight of time. I'm alwers fussing over something of the kind; alwers did, sence I was a baby; had my little windmills and carts and things; used to sell 'em to the other young uns. Father don't like it. He wants me to stick to the farm. I don't like farming. I feel like a fish out of water.—Mrs. Forceythe, marm!"
He turned on her with an abrupt change of tone, so funny that she could with difficulty retain her gravity.
"I heard you saying a sight of queer things the other day about heaven. Clo, she's been telling me a sight more. Now, I never believed in heaven!"
"Why?"
"Because I don't believe," said the poor fellow, with sullen decision, "that a benevolent God ever would ha' made sech a derned awkward chap as I am!"
Aunt Winifred replied by stepping into the house, and bringing out a fine photograph of one of the best of the St. Georges,—a rapt, yet very manly face, in which the saint and the hero are wonderfully blended.
"I suppose," she said, putting it into his hands, "that if you should go to heaven, you would be as much fairer than that picture as that picture is fairer than you are now."
"No! Why, would I, though? Jim-mimy! Why, it would be worth going for, wouldn't it?"
The words were no less reverently spoken than the vague rhapsodies of his father; for the sullenness left his face and his eyes—which
"Make it all up there, maybe?" musing,—"the girls laughing at you all your life, and all? That would be the bigger heft of the two, then, wouldn't it? for they say there ain't any end to things up there. Why, so it might be fair in Him after all; more'n fair, perhaps. See here, Mrs Forceythe, I'm not a church-member, you know, and father, he's dreadful troubled about me; prays over me like a span of ministers, the old gentleman does, every Sunday night. Now, I don't want to go to the other place any more than the next man, and I've had my times, too, of thinking I'd keep steady and say my prayers reg'lar,—it makes a chap feel on a sight better terms with himself,—but I don't see how I'm going to wear white frocks and stand up in a choir,—never could sing no more'n a frog with a cold in his head,—it tires me more now, honest, to think of it, than it does to do a week's mowing. Look at me! Do you s'pose I'm fit for it? Father, he's always talking about the thrones, and the wings, and the praises, and the palms, and having new names in your foreheads (shouldn't object to that, though, by any means), till he drives me into the tool-house, or off on a spree. I tell him if God hain't got a place where chaps like me can do something He's fitted 'em to do in this world, there's no use thinking about it anyhow."
So Auntie took the honest fellow into her most earnest thought for half an hour, and argued, and suggested, and reproved, and helped him as only she could do; and at the end of it seemed to have worked into his mind some distinct and not unwelcome ideas of what a Christlike life must mean to him, and of the coming heaven which is so much more real to her than any life outside of it. "And then," she told him, "I imagine that your fancy for machinery will be employed in some way. Perhaps you will do a great deal more successful inventing there than you ever will here."
"You don't say so!" said radiant Abinadab.
"God will give you something to do, certainly, and something that you will like."
"I might turn it to some religious purpose, you know!' said Abinadab, looking bright. "Perhaps I could help 'em build a church, or hist some of their pearl gates, or something like!"
Upon that he said that it was time to be at home and see to the oxen, and shambled awkwardly away.
Clo told us this afternoon that he begged the errand and the flowers from her. She says: "'Bin thinks there never was anybody like you, Mrs. Forceythe, and 'Bin isn't the only one, either." At which Mrs. Forceythe smiles absently, thinking—I wonder of what.
I saw as funny and as pretty a bit of a drama this afternoon as I have seen for a long time Faith had been rolling out in the hot hay ever since three o'clock, with one of the little Blands, and when the shadows grew long they came in with flushed cheeks and tumbled
tableaux into which the two children grouped themselves; a new one every instant; in the shadow now,—now in a quiver of golden glow; the wind tossing their hair about, and then-chatter chiming down the hall like bells.
"O what a funny little sunset there's going to be behind the maple-tree," said the blond-haired Bland, in a pause.
"Funny enough," observed Faith, with her superior smile, "but it's going to be a great deal funnier up in heaven, I tell you, Molly Bland."
"Funny in heaven? Why, Faith!" Molly drew herself up with a religious air, and looked the image of her father.
"Yes, to be sure. I'm going to have some little pink blocks made out of it when I go; pink and yellow and green and purple and—O, so many blocks! I'm going to have a little red cloud to sail round in, like that one up over the house, too, I shouldn't wonder."
Molly opened her eyes. "O, I don't believe it!"
"You don't know much!" said Miss Faith, superbly. "I shouldn't s'pose you would believe it. P'r'aps I'll have some strawberries too, and some ginger-snaps,—I'm not going to have any old bread and butter up there,—O, and some little gold apples, and a lot of playthings; nicer playthings—why, nicer than they have in the shops in Boston, Molly Bland! God's keeping them up there a purpose."
"Dear me!" said incredulous Molly, "I should just like to know who told you that much. My mother never told it at me. Did your mother tell it at you?"
"O, she told me some of it, and the rest I thinked out myself."
"Let's go and play One Old Cat," said Molly, with an un comfortable jump; "I wish I had'nt got to go to heaven!"
"Why, Molly Bland! why, I think heaven's splendid! I've got my papa up there, you know. 'Here's my little girl!' That's what he's going to say. Mamma, she'll be there, too, and we're all going to live in the prettiest house. I have dreadful hurries to go this afternoon sometimes when PhŒbe's cross and won't give me sugar. They don't let you in, though, 'nless you're a good girl."
"Who gets it all up?" asked puzzled Molly.
"Jesus Christ will give me all those beautiful fings," said Faith, evidently repeating her mother's words,—the only catechism that she has been taught.
"And what will he do when he sees you?" asked her mother, coming down the stairs and stepping up behind her.
"Take me up in his arms and kiss me."
"And what will Faith say?"
"Fank—you!" said the child softly.
In another minute she was absorbed, body and soul, in the mysteries of One Old Cat.
"But I don't think she will feel much like being naughty for half
When will we go, mamma?"
"If there had been any pink blocks and ginger-snaps for me when I was at her age, I should not have prayed every night to 'die out.' I think the horrors of death that children live through, unguessed and unrelieved, are awful. Faith may thank you all her life that she has escaped them."
"I should feel answerable to God for the child's soul, if I had not prevented that. I always wanted to know what sort of mother that poor little thing had, who asked, if she were very good up in heaven, whether they would'nt let her go down to hell Saturday afternoons, and play a little while!"
"I know. But I think of it,—blocks and ginger-snaps!"
"I treat Faith just as the Bible treats us, by dealing in pictures of truth that she can understand. I can make Clo and Abinadab Quirk comprehend that their pianos and machinery may not be made of literal rosewood and steel, but will be some synonyme of the thing, which will answer just such wants of their changed natures as rosewood and steel must answer now. There will be machinery and pianos in the same sense in which there will be pearl gates and harps. Whatever enjoyment any or all of them represent now, something will represent then. But Faith, if I told her that her heavenly ginger-snaps would not be made of molasses and flour, would have a cry, for fear that she was not going to have any ginger-snaps at all; so, until she is older, I give her unqualified ginger-snaps. The principal joy of a child's life consists in eating. Faith begins, as soon as the light wanes, to dream of that gum-drop which she is to have at bedtime. I don't suppose she can outgrow that at once by passing out of her little round body. She must begin where she left off,—nothing but a baby, though it will be as holy and happy a baby as Christ can make it. When she says: 'Mamma, I shall be hungry and want my dinner, up there,' I never hesitate to tell her that she shall have her dinner. She would never, in her secret heart, though she might not have the honesty to say so, expect to be otherwise than miserable in a dinnerless eternity."
"You are not afraid of misleading the child's fancy?"
"Not so long as I can keep the two ideas—that Christ is her best friend, and that heaven is not meant for naughty girls—pre-eminent in her mind. And I sincerely believe that He would give her the very pink blocks which she anticipates, no less than He would give
"Only half; what was it?"
"'O mamma,' he sobbed out, behind his handkerchief, 'don't great big elephants have souls?'
"'No my son.'
"'Nor camels, mamma?'
"'No.'
"'Nor bears, nor alligators, nor chickens?'
"'O no, dear.'
"'O mamma, mamma! Don't little Clean—white—guinea-pigs have souls?'
"I never should have had the heart to say no to that; especially as we have no positive proof to the contrary. Then that scrap of a boy who lost his little red baloon the morning he bought it, and, broken-hearted, wanted to know whether it had gone to heaven. Don't I suppose if he had been taken there himself that very minute, that he would have found a little balloon in waiting for him? How can I help it?"
"It has a pretty sound. If people would not think it so material and shocking—"
"Let people read Martin Luther's letter to his little boy. There is the testimony of a pillar in good and regular standing! I don't think you need be afraid of my balloon, after that."
I remembered that there was a letter of his on heaven, but, not recalling it distinctly, I hunted for it to-night, and read it over. I shall copy it, the better to retain it in mind:—
"Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little son. I see with pleasure that thou learnest well, and prayed diligently. Do so, my son, and continue. When I come home I will bring thee a pretty fairing. "I know a pretty, merry garden wherein are many children. They have little golden coats, and they gather beautiful apples under the trees, and pears, cherries, plums, and wheat-plums;—they sing, and jump, and are merry. They have beautiful little horses, too, with gold bits and silver saddles. And I asked the man to whom the garden belongs, whose children they were. And he said : 'They are the children that love to pray and to learn, and are good.' Then said I: 'Dear man, I have a son, too; his name is Johnny Luther. May he not also come into this garden and eat these beautiful apples and pears, and ride these fine horses?' Then the man said: 'If he loves to pray and to learn, and is good, he shall come into this garden, and Lippus and Jost, too; and when they all come together, they shall have fifes and trumpets, lutes and all sorts of music, and they shall dance, and shoot with little cross-bows.' "And he showed me a fine meadow there in the garden, made for dancing. There hung nothing but golden fifes, trumpets, and fine silver
"Therefore, my dear little son Johnny, learn and pray away! and tell Lippus and Jost, too, that they must learn and pray. And then you shall come to the garden together. Herewith I commend thee to Almighty God. And greet Aunt Lehne, and give her a kiss for my sake.
August 3.
The summer is sliding quietly away,—my desolate summer which I dreaded; with the dreams gone from its wild flowers, the crown from its sunsets, the thrill from its winds and its singing. But I have found out a thing. One can live without dreams and crowns and thrills. I have not lost them. They lie under the ivied cross with Roy for a little while. They will come back to me with him. "Nothing is lost," she teaches me. And until they come back, I see—for she shows me—fields groaning under their white harvest, with labourers very few. Ruth followed the sturdy reapers, gleaning a little. I, perhaps, can do as much. The ways in which I must work seem so small and insignificant, so pitifully trivial sometimes, that I do not even like to write them down here. In fact, they are so small that, six months ago, I did not see them at all. Only to be pleasant to old PhŒbe, and charitable to Meta Tripp, and faithful to my not very interesting little scholars, and a bit watchful of worn-out Mrs. Bland, and——But dear me, I won't! They are so little! But one's self becomes of less importance, which seems to be the point.
It seems very strange to me sometimes, looking back to those desperate winter days, what a change has come over my thoughts of Roy. Not that he is any less—O, never any less to me. But it is almost as if she had raised him from the grave. Why seek ye the living among the dead? Her soft, compassionate eyes shine with the question every hour. And every hour he is helping me,—ah, Roy, we understand one another now. How he must love Aunt Winifred! How pleasant the days will be when we can talk her over, and thank her together!
"To be happy because Roy is happy." I remember how those first words of hers struck me. It does not seem to me impossible, now.
Aunt Winifred and I laugh at each other for talking so much about heaven. I see that the green book is filled with my questions and her answers. The fact is, not that we do not talk as much about mundane affairs as other people, but that this one thing interests us more. If, instead, it had been flounces, or babies, or German philo-
"How spiritual-minded Mary has grown!" Mrs. Bland observes, regarding me respectfully. I try in vain to laugh her out of the conviction. If Roy had not gone before, I should think no more, probably, about the coming life, than does the minister's wife herself. But now—I cannot help it—that is the reality, this the dream; that the substance, this the shadow.
The other day Aunt Winifred and I had a talk which has been of more value to me than all the rest. Faith was in bed; it was a cold, rainy evening; we were secure from callers; we lighted a few kindlers in the parlour grate; she rolled up the easy-chair, and I took my cricket at her feet.
"Paul at the feet of Gamaliel! This is what I call comfort. Now, Auntie, let us go to heaven awhile."
"Very well. What do you want there now?"
I paused a moment, sobered by a thought that has been growing steadily upon me of late. "Something more, Aunt Winifred. All these other things are beautiful and dear; but I believe I want—God. You have not said much about Him. The Bible says a great deal about Him. You have given me the filling-up of heaven in all its pleasant promise, but—I don't know—there seems to be an outline wanting."
She drew my hand up into hers, smiling. "I have not done my painting by artistic methods, I know; but it was not exactly accidental. Tell me, honestly,—is God more to you or less, a more distinct Being or a more vague one, than He was six months ago? Is He, or is He not, dearer to you now than then?"
I thought about it a minute, and then turned my face up to her.
"Mary, what a light in your eyes! How is it?"
It came over me slowly, but it came with such a passion of gratitude and unworthiness, that I scarcely knew how to tell her—that He never has been to me, in all my life, what He is now at the end of these six months. He was once an abstract Grandeur which I struggled more in fear than love to please. He has become a living Presence, dear and real.
He was an inexorable Mystery who took Roy from me to lose him in the glare of a more inexorable heaven. He is a Father who knew better than we that we should be parted for a while; but He only means it to be a little while. He is keeping him for me to find in the flush of seme summer morning, on which I shall open my eyes no
She understood what I could not tell her, and said, "I thought it would be so."
"You, His interpreter, have done it," I answered her. "His heaven shows what He is,—don't you see?—like a friend's letter. I could no more go back to my old groping relations to Him, than I could make of you the dim and somewhat apocryphal Western Auntie that you were before I saw you."
"Which was precisely why I have dealt with this subject as I have," she said. "You had all your life been directed to an indefinite heaven, where the glory of God was to crowd out all individuality and all human joy from His most individual and human creatures, till the 'Glory of God' had become nothing but a name and a dread to you. So I let those three words slide by, and tried to bring you to them, as Christ brought the Twelve to believe in him, 'for the works' sake.' Yes, my child; clinging human loves, stifled longings, cries for rest, forgotten hopes, shall have their answer. Whatever the bewilderment of beauties folded away for us in heavenly nature and art, they shall strive with each other to make us glad. These things have their pleasant place. But, through eternity, there will be always something beyond and dearer than the dearest of them. God himself will be first,—naturally and of necessity, without strain or struggle,—first."
When I sat here last winter with my dead in my house, those words would have roused in me an agony of wild questionings. I should have beaten about them and beaten against them, and cried in my honest heart that they were false. I knew that I loved Roy more than I loved such a Being as God seemed to me then to be. Now, they strike me as simply and pleasantly true. The more I love Roy, the more I love Him. He loves us both.
"You see it could not be otherwise," she went on, speaking low. "Where would you be or I, or they who seem to us so much dearer and better than ourselves, if it were not for Jesus Christ? What can heaven be to us, but a song of the love that is the same to us yesterday, to-day, and forever,—that, in the mystery of an intensity which we shall perhaps never understand, could choose death and be glad in the choosing, and, what is more than that, could live life for us, for three-and-thirty years? I cannot strain my faith—or rather my common sense—to the rapsodies with which many people fill heaven. But it seems to me like this,—A friend goes away from us, and it may be seas or worlds that he between us, and we love him. He leaves behind him his little keepsakes; a lock of hair to curl about our fingers; a picture that has caught the trick of his eyes or smile; a book, a flower, a letter. What we do with the curling hair, what we say to the picture, what we dream over the flower and the letter, nobody knows but ourselves. People have risked life for such mementoes. Yet who loves the senseless gift more than the giver,—the curl more than the young forehead on which it fell,—the letter
"I see; that helps me, like a torch in a dark room. But there will be shadows in the corners. Do you suppose that we shall ever fully feel it in the body?"
"In the body, probably not. We see through a glass so darkly that the temptation to idolatry is always our greatest. Golden images did not die with Paganism. At times I fancy that, somewhere between this world and another, a revelation will come upon us like a flash, of what sin really is,—such a revelation, lighting up the lurid background of our past in such colours, that the consciousness of what Christ has done for us will be for a time as much as heart can bear. After that, the mystery will be, not how to love Him most, but that we ever could have loved any creature or thing as much."
"We serve God quite as much by active work as by special prayer here," I said after some thought; "how will it be there?"
"We must be busily at work certainly; but I think there must naturally be more communion with Him then. Now, this phrase 'communion with God' has been worn, and not always well worn. Prayer means to us, in this life, more often penitent confession than happy interchange of thought with Him. It is associated, too, with aching limbs and sleepy eyes, and nights when the lamp goes out. Obstacles, moral and physical, stand in the way of our knowing exactly what it may mean in the ideal of it. My best conception of it lies in the friendship of the man Christ Jesus. I suppose he will bear with him, eternally, the humanity which he took up with him from the Judean hills. I imagine that we shall see him in visible form like ourselves, among us, yet not of us; that he, himself, is 'Gott mit ihnen;' that we shall talk with him as a man talketh with his friend. Perhaps, bowed and hushed at his dear feet, we shall hear from his own lips the story of Nazareth, of Bethany, of Golgotha, of the chilly mountains where he used to pray all night long for us; of the desert places where he hungered; of his cry for help—think, Mary—His!—when there was not one in all the world to hear it, and there was silence in heaven, while angels strengthened him and man forsook him. Perhaps his voice—the very voice which has sounded whispering through our troubled life—'Could ye not watch one hour?'—shall unfold its perplexed meanings; shall make its rough places plain; shall show us step by step the merciful way by which he led us to that hour; shall point out to us, joy by joy, the surprises that he has been planning for us, just as the old father in the story planned to surprise his wayward boy come home. And such a 'communion,'—which is not too much, nor yet enough, to dare
such will be that 'presence of God,' that 'adoration,' on which we have looked from afar off with despairing eyes that wept, they were so dazzled, and turned themselves away as from the thing they greatly feared."
I think we neither of us cared to talk for a while after this. Something made me forget even that I was going to see Roy in heaven "Three-and-thirty years. Three-and-thirty years." The words rang themselves over.
"It is on the humanity of Christ," she said after some musing, "that all my other reasons for hoping for such a heaven as I hope for, rest for foundation. He knows exactly what we are, for he has been one of us; exactly what we hope and fear and crave, for he has hoped and feared and craved, not the less humanly, but only more intensely.
"'If it were not so,'—do you take in the thoughtful tenderness of that? A mother, stilling her frightened child in the dark, might speak just so,—'If it were not so, I would have told you.' That brooding love makes room for all that we can want. He has sounded every deep of a troubled and tempted life. Who so sure as he to understand how to prepare a place where troubled and tempted lives may grow serene? Further than this; since he stands as our great Type, no less in death and after than before it, he answers for us many of these lesser questions on the event of which so much of our happiness depends.
"Shall we lose our personality in a vague ocean of ether,—you one puff of gas, I another?—He, with his own wounded body, rose and ate, and walked and talked. Is all memory of this life to be swept away?—He, arisen, has forgotten nothing. He waits to meet his disciples at the old, familiar places; as naturally as if he had never been parted from them, he falls in with the current of their thoughts. Has any one troubled us with fears that in the glorified crowds of heaven we may miss a face dearer than all the world to us?—He made himself known to his friends; Mary, and the two at Emmaus, and the bewildered group praying and perplexed in their bolted room Do we weary ourselves with speculations whether human loves can outlive the shock of death?—Mary knew how He loved her, when, turning, she heard him call her by her name. They knew, whose hearts' burned within them while he talked with them by the way, and when he tarried with them, the day being far spent.'"
"And for the rest?"
"For the rest, about which He was silent, we can trust him, and if, trusting, we please ourselves with fancies, he would be the last to think it blame to us. There is one promise which grows upon me the more I study it, 'He that spared not his own Son, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?' Sometimes I wonder if that does not infold a beautiful double entendre, a hint of much that you and I have conjectured,—as one throws down a hint of a surprise to a child. Then there is that pledge to those who seek first His king-
All these things shall he added unto you.' 'These things,' were food and clothing, were varieties of material delight, and the words were spoken to men who lived hungry, beggared, and died the death of outcasts. If this passage could be taken literally, it would be very significant in its bearing on the future life; for Christ must keep his promise to the letter, in one world or another. It may be wrenching the verse, not as a verse, but from the grain of the argument, to insist on the literal interpretation,—though I am not sure."
I asked the other day, wondering whether all ministers were like Dr. Bland, what Uncle Forceythe used to believe about heaven.
"Very much what I do," she said. These questions were brought home to him, early in life, by the death of a very dear sister; he had thought much about them. I think one of the things that so much attached his people to him was the way he had of weaving their future life in with this, till it grew naturally and pleasantly into their frequent thought. O yes, your uncle supplied me with half of my proof-texts."
Aunt Winifred has not looked quite well of late, I fancy; though it may be only fancy. She has not spoken of it, except one day when I told her that she looked pale. It was the heat, she said.
Little Clo came over to-night. I believe she thinks Aunt Winifred the best friend she has in the world. Auntie has become much attached to all her scholars, and has a rare power of winning her way into their confidence. They come to her with all then-little interests,—everything, from saving their souls to trimming a bonnet. Clo, however, is the favourite, as I predicted.
She looked a bit blue to-night, as girls will look; in fact, her face always has a tinge of sadness about it. Aunt Winifred, understanding at a glance that the child was not in a mood to talk before a third, led her away into the garden, and they were gone a long time. When it grew dark, I saw them coming up the path, Clo's hand locked in her teacher's, and her face, which was wet, upturned like a child's. They strolled to the gate, lingered a little to talk, and then Clo said good night without coming in. Auntie sat for a while after she had gone, thinking her over, I could see.
"Poor thing!" she said at last, half to herself, half to me,—"poor little foolish thing! This is where the dreadful individuality of a human soul irks me. There comes a point beyond which you cant help people."
"What has happened to Clo?"
"Nothing, lately. It has been happening for two years. Two
"Poor little thing! What did you say to her?"
"You ought to have heard what she said to me! I wish I were at liberty to tell you the whole story. What troubles her most is that it is not going to help the matter any to die. 'O Mrs. Forceythe,' she says, in a tone that is enough to give the heart-ache, even to such an old woman as Mrs. Forceythe, 'O Mrs. Forceythe, what is going to become of me up there? He never loved me, you see, and he never, never will, and he will have some beautiful, good wife of his own, and I won't have any body! For I can't love anybody else,—I've tried; I tried just as hard as I could to love my cousin 'Bin; he's real good, and—I'm—afraid 'Bin likes me, though I guess he likes his carpet-sweepers better. O, sometimes I think, and think, till it seems as if I could not bear it! I don't see how God can make me happy. I wish I could be buried up and go to sleep, and never have any heaven!'"
"And you told her——?"
"That she should have him there. That is, if not himself, some-thing,—somebody who would so much more than fill his place, that she would never have a lonely or unloved minute. Her eyes brightened, and shaded, and pondered, doubting. She 'didn't see how it could ever be.' I told her not to try and see how, but to leave it to Christ. He knew all about this little trouble of hers, and he would make it right. 'Will he?' she questioned, sighing; 'but there are so many of us! There's 'Bin, and a plenty more, and I don't see how it's going to be smoothed out. Everything is in a jumble, Mrs. Forceythe, don't you see? for some people can't like and keep liking so many times.' Something came into my mind about the rough places that shall be made plain, and the crooked things straight. I tried to explain to her, and at last I kissed away her tears, and sent her home, if not exactly comforted, a little less miserable, I think, than when she came. Ah, well,—I wonder
She finished her sentence somewhat hurriedly, and half started from her chair, raising both hands with a quick involuntary motion that attracted my notice. The lights came in just then, and, unless I am much mistaken, her face showed paler than usual; but when I asked her if she felt faint, she said, "O no, I believe I am a little tired, and will go to bed."
I am glad that the summer is over. This heat has certainly worn on Aunt Winifred, with that kind of wear which slides people into confirmed invalidism. I suppose she would bear it in her saintly way, as she bears everything, but it would be a bitter cup for her. I know she was always pale, but this is a paleness which—
A dreadful thing has happened! I was in the middle of my sentence, when I heard a commotion in the street, and a child's voice shouting incoherently something about the doctor, and "mothers killed! O, mother's killed! mother's burnt to death!" I was at the window in time to see a blond-haired girl running wildly past the house, and to see that it was Molly Bland. At the same moment I saw Aunt Winifred snatching her hat from its nail in the entry. She beckoned to me to follow, and we were half-way over to the parsonage before I had a distinct thought of what I was about.
We came upon a horrible scene. Dr. Bland was trying to do everything alone; there was not a woman in the house to help him, for they had never been able to keep a servant, and none of the neighbours had had time to be there before us. The poor husband was growing faint, I think. Aunt Winifred saw by a look that he could not bear much more, sent him after Molly for the doctor, and took everything meantime into her own charge.
I shall not write down a word of it. It was a sight that, once seen, will never leave me as long as I live. My nerves are thoroughly shaken by it, and it must be put out of thought as far as possible.
It seems that the little boy, the baby, crept into the kitchen by himself, and began to throw the contents of the match-box on the stove, "to make a bonfire," the poor little fellow said. In five minutes his apron was ablaze. His mother was on the spot at his first cry, and smothered the little apron, and saved the child, but her dress was muslin, and everybody was too far off to hear her at first, and by the time her husband came in from the garden it was too late.
She is living yet. Her husband, pacing the room back and forth, and crouching on his knees by the hour, is praying God to let her die before the morning.
There is no chance of life, the doctor says. But he has been able
Aunt Winifred and I were over at the parsonage to-night, when she roused a little from her stupor and recognised us. She spoke to her husband, and kissed me good-bye, and asked for the children. They were playing softly in the next room; we sent for them, and they came in,—the four unconscious, motherless little things,—with the sunlight in their hair. The bitterness of death came into her marred face at sight of them, and she raised her hands to Auntie—to the only other mother there—with a sudden helpless cry:—"I could bear it, I could bear it, if it weren't for them. Without any mother all their lives,—such little things,—and to go away where I can't do a single thing for them!"
Aunt Winifred stooped down and spoke low, but decidedly. "You will do for them. God knows all about it. He will not send you away from them. You shall be just as much their mother, every day of their lives, as you have been here. Perhaps there is something to do for them which you never could have done here. He sees. He loves them. He loves you."
If I could paint, I might paint the look that struck through and through that woman's dying face; but words cannot touch it. If I were Annt Winifred, I should bless God on my knees to-night for having shown me how to give such ease to a soul in death.
God is merciful. Mrs. Bland died at five o'clock.
How such a voice from the heavens shocks one out of the repose of calm sorrows and of calm joys. This has come and gone so suddenly that I cannot adjust it to any quiet and trustful thinking yet. The whole parish mourns excitedly; for, though they worked their minister's wife hard, they loved her well. I cannot talk it over with the rest. It jars. Horror should never be dissected. Besides, my heart is too full of those four little children with the sunlight in their hair and the unconsciousness in their eyes.
Mrs. Quirk came over to-day in great perplexity. She had just come from the minister's. "I don't know what we're a goin' to do with him!" she exclaimed in a gush of impatient, uncomprehending sympathy; you can't let a man take on that way much longer. He'll worry himself sick, and then we shall either lose him or have to pay his bills to Europe! Why, he jest stops in the house, and walks his study up and down, day and night; or else he jest sets and sets and don't notice nobody but the children. Now I've jest ben over makin him some chicken-pie,—he used to set a sight by my chicken-pie,—and he made believe to eat it, 'cause I'd ben at the trouble, I suppose; but how much do you suppose he swallowed? Jest three mouthfuls!
be comforted. Mary Ann Jacobs, who's ben there land of looking after the children and things for him, you know, sence the funeral—she says he's asked three or four times for you, Mrs. Forceythe. There's ben plenty of his people in to see him, but you haven't ben nigh him Mary Ann says."
"I stayed away because I thought the presence of his friends at this time would be an intrusion," Auntie said; "but if he would like to see me, that alters the case. I will go, certainly."
"I don't know," suggested Mrs. Quirk, looking over the tops of her spectacles,—"I s'pose it's proper enough, but you bein' a widow, you know, and his wife—"
Aunt Winifred's eyes shot fire. She stood up and turned upon Mrs. Quirk with a look the like of which I presume that worthy lady had never seen before, and is not likely to see soon again (it gave the beautiful scorn of a Zenobia to her fair, slight face), moved her lips slightly, but said nothing, put on her bonnet, and went straight to Dr. Bland's. The minister, they told her, was in his study. She knocked lightly at the door, and was bidden in a lifeless voice to enter. Shades and blinds were drawn, and the glare of the sun quite shut out. Dr. Bland sat by his study-table, with his face upon his hands. A Bible lay open before him. It had been lately used; the leaves were wet. He raised his head dejectedly, but smiled when he saw who it was. He had been thinking about her, he said, and was glad that she had come.
I do not know all that passed between them, but I gather, from such hints as Auntie in her unconsciousness throws out, that she had things to say which touched some comfortless places in the man's heart. No Greek and Hebrew "original," no polished dogma, no link in his stereotyped logic, not one of his eloquent sermons on the future state, came to his relief.
Those were meant for happy days. They rang cold as steel upon the warm needs of an afflicted man. Brought face to face, and sharply, with the blank heaven of his belief, he stood up from before his dead, and groped about it, and cried out against it in the bitterness of his soul.
"I had no chance to prepare myself to bow to the will of God," he said, his reserved ministerial manner in curious contrast with the caged way in which he was pacing the room,—"I had no chance. I am taken by surprise, as by a thief in the night. I had a great deal to say to her, and there was no time. She could tell me what to do with my poor little children. I wanted to tell her other things. I wanted to tell her—Perhaps we all of us have our regrets when the Lord removes our friends; we may have done or left undone many
She talked with him for a time in her unobtrusive way, deferring, when she honestly could, to his clerical judgment, and careful not to wound him by any word; but frankly and clearly, as she always talks.
When she rose to go he thanked her quietly.
"This is a somewhat novel train of thought to me," he said; "I hope it may not prove an unscriptural one. I have been reading the book of Revelation to-day with these questions especially in mind. We are never too old to learn. Some passages may be capable of other interpretations than I have formerly given them. No matter what I wish, you see, I must be guided by the Word of my God."
Auntie says that she never respected the man so much as she did when, hearing those words, she looked up into his haggard face, convulsed with its human pain and longing.
"I hope you do not think that I am not guided by the Word of God," she answered. "I mean to be."
"I know you mean to be," he said cordially. "I do not say that you are not. I may come to see that you are, and that you are right. It will be a peaceful day for me if I can ever quite agree with your methods of reasoning. But I must think these things over. I thank you once more for coming. Your sympathy is grateful to me.
Just as she closed the door he called her back. "See," he said, with a saddened smile. "At least I shall never preach this again. It seems to me that life is always undoing for us something that we have just laboriously done." He held up before her a mass of old blue manuscript, and threw it, as he spoke, upon the embers left in his grate. It smoked and blazed up and burned out. It was that sermon on heaven of which there is an abstract in this journal.
Aunt Winifred hired Mr. Tripp's gray this afternoon, and drove to East Homer on some unexplained errand. She did not invite me to go with her, and Faith, though she teased impressively, was left at home. Her mother was gone till late,—so late that I had begun to be anxious about her, and heard through the dark the first sound of the buggy wheels, with great relief. She looked very tired when I met her at the gate. She had not been able, she said, to accomplish her errand at East Homer, and from there had gone to Worcester by railroad, leaving Old Gray at the East Homer Eagle till her return. She told me nothing more, and I asked no questions.
Faith has behaved like a witch all day. She knocked down three crickets and six hymn-books in church this morning, and this afternoon horrified the assembled and devout congregation by turning round in the middle of the long prayer, and, in a loud and distinct voice, asking Mrs. Quirk for "'nother those pepp'mints such as you gave me one Sunday a good many years ago, you 'member. After church, her mother tried a few Bible questions to keep her still.
"Faith, who was Christ's father?"
"Jerusalem!" said Faith, promptly.
"Where did his parents take Jesus when they fled from Herod?"
"Oh, to Europe. Of course I knew that! Everybody goes to Europe."
To-night, when her mother had put her to bed, she came down laughing. "Faith does seem to have a hard time with the Lord's Prayer. To-night, being very sleepy and in a hurry to finish, she proceeded with great solemnity :—'Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, and—Oh!' I was just thinking how amused her father must be."
Auntie says many such things. I cannot explain how pleasantly they strike me, nor how they help me.
Dr. Bland gave us a good sermon yesterday. There is an indescribable change in all his sermons. There is a change, too, in the man, and that something more than the haggardness of grief. I not only respect him and am sorry for him, but I feel more ready to be taught by him than ever before. A certain indefinable humanness softens his eyes and tones, and seems to be creeping into everything that he says. Yet, on the other hand, his people say that they have never heard him speak such pleasant, helpful things concerning his and their relations to God. I met him the other night, coming away from his wife's grave, and was struck by the expression of his face. I wondered if he were not slowly finding the "peaceful day," of which he told Aunt Winifred. She, by the way, has taken another of her mysterious trips to Worcester.
We were wondering to-day where it will be,—I mean heaven.
"It is impossible to do more than wonder," Auntie said, "though we are explicitly told that there will be new heavens and a new earth, which seems, if anything can be taken literally in the Bible, to point to this world as the future home of at least some of us."
"Not for all of us, of course?"
"I don't feel sure. I know tha somebody spent his valuable time in estimating that all the people who have lived and died upon the earth would cover it, alive or buried, twice over; but I know that somebody else claims with equal solemnity to have discovered that they could all be buried in the State of Pennsylvania! But it would
"Why?"
"Certainly there is a 'place' in which we are promised that we shall be 'with Christ,' this world being yet the great theatre of human life and battle-ground of Satan; no place, certainly, in which to confine a happy soul without prospect of release. The Spiritualistic notion of 'circles' of dead friends revolving over us is to me intolerable. I want my husband with me when I need him, but I hope he has a place to be happy in, which is out of this woeful world. The old astronomical idea, stars around a sun, and systems around a centre, and that centre the Throne of God, is not an unreasonable one. Isaac Taylor, among his various conjectures, inclines, I fancy, to suppose that the sun of each system is the heaven of that system Though the glory of God may be more directly and impressively exhibited in one place than in another, we may live in different planets, and some of us, after its destruction and renovation, on this same dear old, happy and miserable, loved and maltreated earth. I hope I shall be one of them. I should like to come back and build me a beautiful home in Kansas,—I mean in what was Kansas,—among the happy people and the familiar, transfigured spots where John and I worked for God so long together. That—with my dear Lord to see and speak with every day—would be 'Heaven our Home."
"There will be no days then?"
"There will be succession of time. There may not be alternations of twenty-four hours dark or light, but 'I use with thee an earthly language,' as the wife said in that beautiful little 'Awakening,' of Therrmin's. Do you remember it? Do read it over, if you haven't read it lately. As to our coming back here, there is an echo to Peter's assertion, in the idea of a world under a curse, destroyed and regenerated,—the atonement of Christ reaching, with something more than poetic force, the very sands of the earth which he trod with bleeding, feet to make himself its Saviour. That makes me feel—don't you see?—what a taint there is in sin. If dumb dust is to have such awful cleansing, what must be needed for you and me? How many pleasant talks we have had about these things, Mary! Well, it cannot be long, at the longest, before we know, even as we are known."
I looked at her smiling white face,—it is always very white now,—and something struck slowly through me like a chill.
There is no such thing as sleep at present. Writing is better than thinking.
Aunt Winifred went again to Worcester to-day. She said that she had to buy trimming for Faith's sack. She went alone, as usual, and Faith and I kept each other company through the afternoon,—the on the floor with Mary Ann, I in an easy-chair with Macaulay. As the light began to fall level on the floor, I threw the book aside,—being
As the long, golden afternoon slid away, we came out by the front gate to watch for the child's mother. I was tired, and, lying back on the grass, gave Faith some pink and purple larkspurs, that she might amuse herself in making a chain of them. The picture that she made sitting there on the short, dying grass—the light which broke all about her and over her at the first, creeping slowly down and away to the west, her little fingers linking the rich, bright flowers tube into tube, the dimple on her cheek and the love in her eyes—has photo graphed itself into my thinking. How her voice rang out when the wheels sounded at last, and the carriage, somewhat slowly driven, stopped!
"Mamma, mamma! see what I've got for you, mamma!"
Auntie tried to step from the carriage, and called me: "Mary can you help me a little? I am—tired." I went to her, and she leaned heavily on my arm, and we came up the path.
"Such a pretty little chain, all for you, mamma," began Faith, and stopped, struck by her mother's look.
"It has been a long ride, and I am in pain. I believe I will he right down on the parlour sofa. Mary, would you be kind enough to give Faith her supper and put her to bed?"
Faith's lip grieved. "Cousin Mary is'nt you, mamma. I want to be kissed. You have'nt kissed me."
Her mother hesitated for a moment; then kissed her once, twice; put both arms about her neck; and turned her face to the wall without a word.
"Mamma is tired, dear," I said, "come away."
She was lying quite still when I had done what was to be done for the child, and had come back. The room was nearly dark. I sat down on my cricket by her sofa.
"Shall PhŒbe light the lamp?"
"Not just yet."
"Can't you drink a cup of tea if I bring it?"
"Not just yet."
"Did you find the sack-trimming?" I ventured, after a pause.
"I believe so,—yes."
She drew a little package from her pocket, held it a moment, then let it roll to the floor forgotten. When I picked it up the soft tissue-paper wrapper was wet and hot with tears.
"Mary?"
"Yes."
"I never thought of the little trimming till the last minute. I had another errand."
I waited.
"I thought at first I would not tell you just yet. But I suppose the time has come; it will be no more easy to put it off. I have been to Worcester all these times to see a doctor."
I bent my head in the dark, and listened for the rest.
"He has his reputation: they said he could help me if anybody could. He thought at first he could. But to-day—Mary, see here.
She walked feebly towards the window, where a faint, gray light struggled in, and opened the bosom of her dress. . . . .
There was a silence between us for a long while after that; she went back to the sofa, and I took her hand and bowed my face over it and so we sat. The leaves rustled out of doors. Faith, upstairs, was singing herself to sleep with a droning sound.
"He talked of risking an operation," she said, at length, "but decided to-day that it was quite useless. I suppose I must give up and be sick now; I am feeling the reaction from having kept up so long. He thinks I shall not suffer a very great deal. He thinks he can relieve me, and that it may be soon over."
"There is no chance?"
"No chance."
I took both of her hands, and cried out, I believe, as I did that first night when she spoke to me of Roy,—"Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!" and tried to think what I was doing, but only cried out the more.
"Why, Mary!" she said,—"why, Mary!" and again, as before she passed her soft hand to and fro across my hair, till by and by I began to think, as I had thought before, that I could bear anything which God who loved us all—who surely loved us all—should send. So then, after I had grown still, she began to tell me about it in her quiet voice, and the leaves rustled, and Faith had sung herself to sleep, and I listened wondering. For there was no pain in the quiet voice,—no pain, nor tone of fear. Indeed, it seemed to me that I detected, through its subdued sadness, a secret, suppressed buoyancy of satisfaction, with which something struggled.
"And you?" I asked, turning quickly upon her.
"I should thank God with all my heart, Mary, if it were not for Faith and you. But it is for Faith and you. That's all."
When I had locked the front door, and was creeping up here to my room, my foot crushed something, and a faint, wounded perfume came up. It was the little pink and purple chain.
"The Lord God a' mighty help us! but His ways are past finding out. What with one thing and another thing, that child without a mother, and you with the crape not yet rusty for Mr. Roy'l, it does seem to me as if His manner of treating folks beats all! But I tell you this, Miss Mary, my dear; you jest say your prayers reg'lar and stick to Him, and He'll pull you through, sure!" This was what PhŒbe said when I told her.
To-night, for the first time, Auntie fairly gave up trying to put Faith to bed. She had insisted on it until now, crawling up by the banisters like a wounded thing. This time she tottered and sank upon the second step. She cried out, feebly: "I am afraid I must give it up to Cousin Mary. Faith!"—the child clung with both hands to her,—"Faith, Faith! Mother's little girl!"
It was the last dear care of motherhood yielded; the last link snapped. It seemed to be the very bitterness of parting. I turned away, that they might bear it together, they two alone.
Yet I think that took away the sting.
The days are slipping away now very quietly, and—to her I am sure, and to me for her sake—very happily. She sutlers less than I had feared, and she lies upon the bed and smiles, and Faith comes in and plays about, and the cheery morning sunshine falls on everything, and when her strong hours come, we have long talks together, hand clasped in hand. Such pleasant talks! We are quite brave to speak of anything, since we know that what is to be is best just so, and since we fear no parting. I tell her that Faith and I will soon learn to shut our eyes and think we see her, and try to make it almost the same, for she will never be very far away, will she? And then she shakes her head smiling, for it pleases her, and she kisses me softly. Then we dream of how it will all be, and how we shall love and try to please each other quite as much as now.
"It will be like going round a corner, don't you see?" she says.
You will know that I am there all the while, though hidden, and that if you call me I shall hear." Then we talk of Faith, and of how I shall comfort her; that I shall teach her this, and guard her from that, and how I shall talk with her about heaven and her mother. Sometimes Faith comes up and wants to know what we are saying, and lays poor Mary Ann, sawdust and all, upon the pillow, and wants "her toof-ache kissed away." So Auntie kisses away the dolly's "toof-ache "; and kisses the dolly's little mother, sometimes with a quiver on her lips, but more often with a smile in her eyes, and Faith runs back to play, and her laugh ripples out, and her mother listens—listens—
Sometimes, too, we talk of some of the people for whom she cares; of her husband's friends; of her scholars, or Dr. Bland, or Clo, or poor 'Bin Quirk, or of somebody down town whom she was planning
But I notice lately that she more often and more quickly wearies of these things; that she comes back, and comes back again to some loving thought—as loving as a child's—of Jesus Christ. He seems to be—as she once said she tried that He should be to Faith—her "best friend."
Sometimes, too, we wonder what it means to pass out of the body, and what one will be first conscious of.
"I used to have a very human, and by no means slight, dread of the physical pain of death," she said to-day; "but, for some reason or other, that is slowly leaving me. I imagine that the suffering of any fatal sickness is worse than the immediate process of dissolution. Then there is so much beyond it to occupy one's thoughts. One thing I have thought much about; it is that, whatever may be our first experience after leaving the body, it is not likely to be a revolutionary one. It is more in analogy with God's dealings that a quiet process, a gentle accustoming, should open our eyes on the light that would blind if it came in a flash. Perhaps we shall not see Him,—perhaps we could not bear it to see Him at once. It may be that the faces of familiar human friends will be the first to greet us; it may be that the touch of the human hand dearer than any but His own shall lead us, as we are able, behind the veil, till we are a little used to the glory and the wonder, and lead us so to Him. Be that as it may, and be heaven where it may, I am not afraid. With all my guessing and my studying and my dreaming over these things. I am only a child in the dark, 'Nevertheless, I am not afraid of the dark.' God bless Mr. Robertson for saying that! I'm going to bless him when I see him. How pleasant it will be to see him, and some other friends whose faces I never saw in this world. David, for instance, or Paul, or Cowper, or President Lincoln, or Mrs. Browning. The only trouble is that I am nobody to them! However, I fancy that they will let me shake hands with them. No, I am quite willing to trust all these things to God.
I may find them very different from what I have supposed. I know that I shall find them infinitely more satisfying than I have supposed. As Schiller said of his philosophy, 'Perhaps I may be ashamed of my raw design at sight of the true original. This may happen; I expect it; but then, if reality bears no resemblance to my dreams, it will be a more majestic, a more delightful surprise.' I believe nothing that God denies. I cannot overate the beauty of his promise. So it surely can have done no harm for me to take the comfort of my fancying till I am there; and what a comfort it has been to me, God only knows. I could scarcely have borne some things without it."
"You are never afraid that anything proving a little different from what you expect might—"
"Might disappoint me? No; I have settled that in my heart with God. I do not think I shall be disappointed. The truth is, he has obviously not opened the gates which bar heaven from our sight, but he has as obviously not shut them; they stand ajar with the Bible and reason in the way, to keep them from closing; surely we should look in as far as we can, and surely, if we look with reverence, our eyes will be holden, that we may not cheat ourselves with mirages. And, as the little Swedish girl said, the first time she saw the stars: 'O father, if the wrong side of heaven is so beautiful, what must the right side be?'"
I write little now, for I am living too much. The days are stealing away and lessening one by one, and still Faith plays about the room, though very softly now, and still the cheery sunshine shimmers in, and still we talk with clasping hands, less often and more pleasantly. Morning and noon and evening come and go; the snow drifts down and the rain falls softly; clouds form and break and hurry past the windows; shadows melt and lights are shattered, and little rainbows are prisoned by the icicles that hang from the eaves. I sit and watch them, and watch the sick-lamp flicker in the night, and watch the blue morning crawl over the hills; and the old words are stealing down my thought: That is the substance, this the shadow; that the reality, this the dream.
I watch her face upon the pillow; the happy secret on its lips; the smile within its eyes. It is nearly a year now since God sent the face to me. What it has done for me he knows; what the next year and all the years are to be without it, He knows, too. It is slipping away,—slipping. And I—must—lose it.
Perhaps I should not have said what I said to-night; but being weak from watching, and seeing how glad she was to go, seeing how all the peace was for her, all the pain for us, I cried, "O Auntie, Auntie, why can't we go too? Why can't Faith and I go with you? But she answered me only, "Mary, He knows." We will be brave again to-morrow. A little more sunshine in the room! A little more of Faith and the dolly!
She asked for the child at bedtime to-night, and I laid her down in her night-dress on her mother's arm. She kissed her, and said her prayers, and talked a bit about Mary Ann, and to-morrow, and her snow man. I sat over by the window in the dusk, and watched a little creamy cloud that was folding in the moon. Presently their voices grew low, and at last Faith's stopped altogether. Then I heard in fragments this:—
"Sleepy, dear? But you won't have many more talks with mamma. Keep awake just a minute, Faith, and hear, can you hear? Mamma will never, never forget her little girl; she won't go away very far; she will always love you. Will you remember as long as you live? She will always see you, though you can't see her, perhaps. Hush my darling, don't cry! God isn't naughty! No, God is good; God is always good. He won't take mamma a great way off. One more kiss? There! now you may go to sleep. One more? Come, Cousin Mary."
It is a long time since I have written here. I did not want to open the book till I was sure that I could open it quietly, and could speak as she would like to have me speak, of what remains to be written. But a very few words will tell it all. It happened so naturally and so happily, she was so glad when the time came, and she made me so glad for her sake, that I cannot grieve. I say it from my honest heart, I cannot grieve. In the place out of which she has gone, she has left me peace. I think of something that Miss Procter said about the opening of that golden gate,
"round which the kneeling spirits wait. The halo seemed to linger round those kneeling closest to the door: The joy that lightened from that place shines still upon the watcher's face."
I think more often of some things that she herself said in the very last of those pleasant talks, when, turning a leaf in her little Bible, she pointed out to me the words :—"It is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come." It was one spring-like night,—the twenty-ninth of March. She had been in less pain, and had chatted and laughed more with us than for many a day. She begged that Faith might stay till dark, and might bring her Noah's ark and play down upon the foot of the bed where she could see her. I sat in the rocking-chair with my face to the window. We did not light the lamps. The night came on slowly. Showery clouds flitted by, but there was a blaze of golden colour behind them. It broke through and scattered them; it burned them and melted them; it shot great pink and purple jets up to the zenith; it fell and lay in amber mist upon the hills. A soft wind swept by, and darted now and then into the glow, and shifted it about, colour away from colour, and back again.
"See, Faith!" she said softly; "put down the little camel a minute, and look!" and added after, but neither to the child nor to
Faith, with her little ark, was still playing quietly upon the bed. I sat down again in my rocking-chair with my face to the window. Now and then the child's voice broke the silence, asking, where should she put the elephant, and was there room there for the yellow bird? and now and then her mother answered her, and so presently the skies had faded, and so the night came on.
I was thinking it was Faith's bedtime, and that I had better light the lamp, when a few distinct, hurried words from the bed attracted my attention.
"Faith, I think you had better kiss mamma now, and get down."
There was a change in the voice. I was there in a moment, and lifted the child from the pillow, where she had crept. But she said,
"Wait a minute, Mary; wait a minute,"—for Faith clung to her, with one hand upon her cheek, softly patting it. I went over and stood by the window. It was her mother herself who gently put the little fingers away at last.
"Mother's own little girl! Good night, my darling, my darling."
So I took the child away to Phoebe, and came back and shut the door.
"I thought you might have some message for Roy," she said.
"Now?"
"Now, I think."
We had often talked of this, and she had promised to remember it, whatever it might be. So I told her—But I will not write what I told her.
I saw that she was playing weakly with her wedding-ring, which hung very loosely below its little worn guard.
"Take the little guard," she said, "and keep it for Faith; but bury the other with me: he put it on; nobody else must take it——"
The sentence dropped, unfinished. I crept up on the bed beside her, for she seemed to wish it. I asked if I should light the lamp, but she shook her head. The room seemed light, she said, quite quite light. She wondered then if Faith were asleep, and if she would waken early in the morning. After that I kissed her, and then we said nothing more, only presently she asked me to hold her hand.
It was quite dark when she turned her face at last towards the window.
"John!" she said,—"why, John!"
* * * * * * *
They came in, with heads uncovered and voices hushed, to see her, in the days while she was lying down stairs among the flowers.
Once when I thought that she was alone, I went in,—it was at twilight,—and turned, startled by a figure that was crouched sobbing on the floor.
"O,I want to go too, I want to go too!" it cried.
"She's ben there all day long," said PhŒbe, wiping her eyes, "and she won't go home for a mouthful of victuals, poor creetur! but she jest sets there and cries and cries, an' there's no stoppin' of her."
It was little Clo.
At another time, I was there with fresh flowers, when the door opened, creaking a little, and 'Bin Quirk came in on tiptoe, trying in vain to still the noise of his new boots. His eyes were red and wet, and he held out to me timidly a single white carnation.
"Could you put it somewhere, where it would'nt do any harm? I walked away over to Worcester and back to get it. If you could jest hide it under the others out of sight, seems to me it would do me a sight of good to feel it was there, you know."
I motioned him to lay it himself between her fingers.
"O, I dars n't. I'm not fit, I'm not. She'd rether have you."
But I told him I knew she would be as pleased that he should give it to her himself as she was when he gave her the China pinks on that distant summer day. So the great awkward fellow bent down, as simply as a child, as tenderly as a woman, and left the flower in its place.
"She liked 'em," he faltered; maybe, if what she used to say is all so, she'll like 'em now. She liked 'em better than she did machines. I've just got my carpet-sweeper through; I was thinking how pleased she'd be; I wanted to tell her. If I should go to the good place,—if ever I do go, it will be just her doin's—I'll tell her then, maybe I—" He forgot that anybody was there, and, sobbing, hid his face in his great hands.
So we are waiting for the morning when the gates shall open,—Faith and I. I, from my stiller watches, am not saddened by the music of her life. I feel sure that her mother wishes it to be a cheery life. I feel sure that she is showing me, who will have no motherhood by which to show myself, how to help her little girl.
And Roy,—all, well, and Roy,—he knows. Our hour is not yet come. If the Master will that we should be about His Father's business, what is that to us?
As the terrible and seductive doctrines of Spiritualism have at length been proclaimed in our midst, in a way too plain to be mistaken, I have felt impelled to offer the following remarks, in order, with the Divine blessing, to render some slight help to any of my fellow Christians who may have been troubled, or it may be even shaken, by the specious arguments which have been so sedulously used in its favour.
I am the more led to this by the fact of my having found, in my intercourse with those around me, that this is by no means an unlikely result, or one which might be expected to occur in very exceptional cases only. To my grief and amazement I have found many, both old and young, who, while professing to be Christians, not only have thought it no great evil, or dishonour to the Lord's name, to have attended the lectures lately delivered by Mr James Smith in this city upon the subject of Spiritualism, but who, after having done so, yet fail to perceive the true tendency of these lectures as aiming a fatal blow to the very ground-work upon which their profession of Christianity is based: a blow so thorough that to suppose the possible identity of Christianity and Spiritualism is as absurd as to suppose the identity of good and evil, of light and darkness, or of life and death.
This utter incongruity between the two has, however, been denied by Mr. Smith, who would have us to understand that inasmuch as Christianity and Spiritualism alike
That I am correct in the above statement is plain from the fact that in Mr. Smith's first letter in reply to Dr. Copland he speaks of the pith of Christianity as found in the 37th and three following verses of Matthew 22nd, and in Christ's Sermon on the Mount; and that this, as a Divine rule for human conduct, is precisely similar to that which is constantly enforced by his "teachers" from the spirit world, who, he tells us in another letter, are "Incessantly inculcating boundless love of our heavenly Father, boundless admiration of His wisdom, boundless trust in His providence, and implicit obedience to His law." And in the same letter Mr Smith says, apparently presuming upon the acquiescence, not only of Dr Copland, but also of Christians generally to its truth, that these two Commandments, viz., of love to God and love to my neighbour, are "The very pillars which support the whole edifice of the Christian religion." It is this great and fundamental error which I desire to expose to view; for I venture to say that upon this—viz., the understanding of what the foundation of Christianity really is—the whole question at issue will be found to rest. I assert, then, and would establish my assertion from Scripture—first, that the basis of Christianity consists in belief in the person of Jesus as the Christ, i.e., the sent one, of God; and, second, its superstructure consists in submission to Christ's words, and in following him. This superstructure cannot exist except upon the proper foundation. Thus I read, in proof of the
him was life." "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life." Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom He hath sent." "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins "I am the bread of life." "I am the living bread which came down from heaven." "I am the resurrection and the life." Because I live, ye shall live also." "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in himself." "He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." And I also read, in proof of my second statement :—"If any man will come after me let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed." If ye love me, keep my commandments." He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you."
From these and numerous other passages which I doubt not will suggest themselves to the reader, I take my stand, and claim to be recognised as a Christian, not because I believe that all the law and the prophets hang upon the two commandments respecting love to God and love to my neighbour—although this be perfectly true—but because I believe in Jems as him whom "God sent into the world to save sinners." Believing in him—in Jesus Christ—I am assured from his own mouth that I "have everlasting life"—that I have "passed from death unto life." I am assured that I am as much one with him as he is "one with the Father"; and I am taught to wait for the fulfilment of his
My Life. This is my claim to being a Christian—a Christ's-Man. Say, dear reader, is this yours?
I would now proceed further, and press upon my readers the following, viz., that belief in Jesus as the Christ of God necessitates the acknowledgment that the Scriptures of the Old Testament are what they profess to be—the authoritative Word of God. I must acknowledge the authority of these, because of the declarations concerning Jesus Christ made by those who wrote his life, and to whom we are indebted for all that we know concerning him. The words "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets" are too well known as occurring in connection with so many of the incidents mentioned in his life to require more than an allusion to them. But what do they prove, if not this, that the writers of Christ's life wish to show that Christ himself was the one to whom these old scriptures refer? And on this Christ's words are explicit. He says, in his sermon on the Mount, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." And, again, "Search the Scriptures * * for they are they that testify of me."
Yet further; Christ is constantly quoting from Scripture, and doing so in every case as giving his divine sanction to its authority. Thus he resists Satan, not with words as from himself, but with words which he could preface with the decisive declaration "It is written." Thus also he
I would now ask any candid reader, does not all this show that Christ acknowledged, and that he inculcated the acknowledgment upon others, that the Old Testament Scriptures were indeed authoritative, and that in all their teachings? Their histories he refers to again and again, and confirms them by so doing; their doctrines he expounds and enforces; their prophetic teachings he declares culminate in himself, for so he taught his disciples, saying, "O fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken! And, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the
unwittingly, will not avail; for this as much precludes his right to say concerning himself "I am the truth," as if he were from first to last a liar and a deceiver. The whole of his life is cither intensely true or intensely false; if the first, then everything must be believed; if the second, then nothing can be believed,—and there is no middle ground possible.
But now a step further. I would assert that belief in Jesus, as the Christ of God, necessitates the rejection, as a foundation for faith, of all other communications whatever, whether they be the writings of men, or the professed communications of angels or spirits : as, indeed' Pauls says in his solemn word to the Galatians, "Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."
I read in Scripture thus : "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." He, then, the declarer of the Father, involved in the Old Testament and evolved in the
upon nothing else. Bnd to guard me against the very delusion into which Mr Smith has fallen, I read in Deuteronomy as follows: "There shall not be found among you . . a consulter with familiar spirits . . . or a necromancer, for all that do these these things are an abomination unto the Lord .... The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet . . . and he shall speak all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto the words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him." This One has come and has spoken. Our answer to Mr. Smith, then, is, that as Christians we must
Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me."
It was the writer's wish that the above, in a much condensed form, should have appeared amongst the correspondence in the 'Daily Times' some days prior to Mr. Smith's leaving Dunedin for Australia. It was sent in to that journal, but was not considered suitable.
Only one aspect of this subject—though there are many others—has been touched upon; the object in view being to point out to the simplest believer in the Lord Jesus that in his childlike faith in Him he has a perfect "shield," wherewith he shall "be able to quench all the fiery darts of the Wicked One."
Dunedin,
Mills, Dick and Co., Printers, Stafford street, Dunedin.
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"Awake! Awake! put on strength O arm of the Lord."
"Awake! Awake! put on thy strength O Zion : put on thy beautiful garments O Jerusalem.
"Arise! and be doing, and the Lord be with thee."
"Arise! Shine! for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
Printed by F. Humffray, George street.
f our outer life has its ups and downs, so much more is this the case with our inner life. Our friend All man was no exception to the rule. Heretofore he had been pumping Browne about miracles and giving up gradually, now one prejudice, now another, as his sound common sense, assisted by Browne's conversations, came to perceive how hollow and reasonless they were. But a few days back he had seen a placard on the walls announcing that a lecture would be delivered that evening at a certain mechanics' institute by George Rookson on miracles; and as the subject jumped with a strong current of his thoughts, he went to hear what the lecturer had to say about it. The lecture was temperate in tone; clear, and occasionally even eloquent; but its whole object was to prove that miracles were an impossibility, and the offspring of superstition. All man listened with both his ears; and the result was that he came home in a miserable state of mind, such as he had never known before, since first he came to the age of reason. For the lecturer had not spared Christianity; and the plentiful shafts of his sarcasm were most mercilessly aimed at the miracles of the Bible than even at what we may call ecclesiastical miracles. He had measured his audience beforehand, and knew he would have to deal with Protestants. The result on All man's mind was that cruel doubts would make themselves felt about the truth of the Bible and of the Christian religion. He was quite upset—miserable. The foundation of his faith had been for the moment undermined; and he found himself, of a sudden, closed round in more than Egyptian darkness.
He could not shake off his depression the next day; and in the evening, when the Rev. Amminadab Gronout had called in as usual, to tea and muffins, it could not escape the suspicious observation of Mrs A. At length, just as the classic 'pine-apple rum' and hot water had been ordered, that amiable companion of his life turned round sharply upon him, exclaiming, 'Whatever has come over you, Solomon, my dear? You sit there saying nothing, and looking like the wicked who flee when no man pursueth. Whatever is it, Soly? Is it the glorious conviction at last that you are a miserable sinner—that all your righteousness is as filthy rags? Is it an awakening? Tell me, dearest?' 'Not exactly said Allman, provoked to forget his ordinary prudence in this very godly company; and adding, with a fierceness which approached a grin, 'I'm doubting whether Christianity is not all humbug; that's all.' 'The Lord in His mercy save us,' exclaimed the dame, now thoroughly alarmed. 'O Solomon, how has this come about? Who has been leading you astray into darkness and the shadow of death? Dearee me, its awful. Open up your poor heart to this excellent man of God; do, Allman.' Whether it was that the real sympathy of his wife moved him, or the thought passed across him that perhaps the pious Amminadab might be of some little help, is uncertain; but at all events, he came out with it like a man. 'Well, the truth is, I heard a man lecture last night on miracles, and he proved that miracles were absurd—a simple impossibility; and I don't see my way out of it. What would you have me do, sir?' The Rev. Amminadab Gronout, thus appealed to, paused in the act of stirring his Will-composed night-cap, and replied, in an oracular sort of whine: 'Poor sinner, I perceive that thou art in the slough of despond and in the pitfalls of unbelief; trust in Christ.' 'But that's just what I can't do,' retorts Allman; for if His miracles are a sham, how can I believe Him to be what He says He is?' The reverend gentleman's face became more majestic and merciless, as he re-marked : 'Even so do the carnal-minded deem who have not been called of God as was Abraham. The unregenerate man savoureth not of heavenly things. Go, unfortunate sinner; go in all thy blindness; go to Christ.' 'Cant and humbug!' muttered the enraged Allman, as, amidst a volcano of regenerate groans in duet, he flung himself out of the room, and slammed the door after him.
It must be confessed that our good friend was not in the most amiable frame of mind; nor did his sleeping over it make him much better. He was annoyed with himself; annoyed with those two simpletons at home; annoyed with everything around him. He couldn't stand it. It was no use trying to throw it off by plunging into business, for his thoughts would go back to the
Browne. Hallo, Allman I What's the matter? You look like an owl in an ivy-bush.
Allman. Don't plague me, Browne. I can't stand it to-day. I'm half-mad; and I've come to you to see if you can help me. I've tried Amminadab; and all I got for my pains was to find him out to be the consummate fool I always took him for. Hang him, he's enough to make a man an infidel, without anything else; and I don't want helping in that direction just at present; that's certain.
Browne. My dear friend, forgive me. I see there's something really the matter; if there's anything I can do—you know me, Allman, before now. What is it? Is anything wrong with the business?
Allman. Hang the business!
Browne. Allman, Allman, this will never do. Rouse your-self, and don't give way to ill-temper.
Allman. Don't mind me old fellow. I didn't mean it. But I'm everlastingly upset, and there's the long and short of it. I've been to hear a lecture against miracles, and I don't know whether I'm standing on my head or my heels. The Bible's gone; Christianity's gone; hope's gone. I don't know whether I'm not, after all, a highly-educated tadpole, and destined to go an eternal smash when I have said my last good-bye to the old gal and the kids, melting away like sugar into less than nothing; and that high-pressure Bedlamite, Gronout, shunts his chin athwart his stiff choker at me, and grunts out with the tone of a Pope—Go to Christ.
Browne. Oh, that's all, is it? Well, I shouldn't have gone to Amminadab, if I had been you.
Allman. Now just listen to the man. Here's a poor fellow become an infidel at one sitting, and he says. Is that all? Cool, very : And I shouldn't have gone to Amminadab! Of course not; only I was half cracked at the time.
Browne. Well, I am cool, old boy; because, with God's help, I don't think the infidel fit will last long with you. You are too earnest, and God is too good. But now, tell me, what were the arguments which seem to have had such a strong effect upon you? One at a time, you know; that's the proper way of doing business.
Allman. I declare I begin to breathe again. You're so calm and confident; just like those knowing doctors with nervous patients—'Now don't excite yourself; there's nothing very serious the
matter; let me feel your pulse, please; now the tongue. That'll do.' Isn't that it, eh, Browne? Yes, it does decidedly give a fellow pluck. So now for the first dose. He began by saying that it wasn't at all certain whether there was a God or no; and, if there was one, we knew nothing about Him, and we couldn't know anything about Him; so we might just as well leave Him out of the question. That's how he began; and I think that was about enough for one gulp.
Browne. I am free to own that the lecturer has simplified his work considerably; for if God is left out of the question, there is no doubt that miracles are done for. You can't have a miracle if there is nobody to work one. But how your sound common sense, Allman, could lend an ear to such preposterous and groundless assertions puzzles me. What! Is the universal voice of mankind from the very beginning of no account? Is this fair world, in all its strength and beauty and order, a mere thing of chance? Are those stern judgments of conscience, that instinctive sense of right and wrong, those universal hopes and fears of the future, the mere phantoms of the individual imagination—the product, perchance, of a higher and developed electricity?
Allman. You are right there, Browne, sure enough. If there's no God, I don't for the life of me see how there can be anything else? If you are to have a watch, you must have your watchmaker. But I am more bothered about the other point. God is a pure spirit; and we cannot see, hear, feel, or know Him by any of the senses. He doesn't seem to interfere with our daily goings-on; at least, if He docs, He is as still as a mouse about it.
Browne. Did you ever sec, or hear, or feel Sir Christopher Wren, who planned St. Paul's, London? Did you ever know by any of your senses Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted so many beautiful portraits?
Allman. No; of course not. But then I can form a tolerably good idea of them from their buildings and pictures.
Browne. And cannot you do the same with our good God? I will say nothing of the supernatural order, because you would not quite understand me yet; and, besides, it would be out of place : but look around you upon the wonders of creation in the heavens above and earth beneath : the various, and all but num-berless orders of birds, beasts, fish, reptiles, insects; the plants, shrubs, trees; mountains, lakes, seas, rivers, fountains; do you not see power, beauty, order, skill? Look then within; you will find justice, wisdom, will, freedom, a moral law, a ruling conscience in your own soul. These tell me much indeed of Him Who made them. He is neither unknowable nor unknown to me. Surely, though we cannot comprehend all His excellence—for the limited cannot grasp the unlimited—yet we may confi-
Allman. Just what I had in my head; only you have brought it out; as the schoolboy said to his master, who was jogging his memory at both ends by hints from book and cane. Of course, I can and do know a great deal about God in this way; for nobody can put into another what he hasn't got himself. So that all that is good, and beautiful, and strong, and wise, and perfect in created things must be at least equally in God. Yes, it's plain. That unknown and unknowable business is a simple bit of humbug, made to take in flats.
Browne. But, remember, you were taken in for the moment yourself, Allman; so don't be too hard on flats. However, I think we may leave that point now, and charitably suppose that there is a God, and that we may know something about Him; just for the sake of argument, you know.
Allman. Now, don't be sarcastic; as the young dandy said to the chimpanzee.
Browne. Well, what was the lecturer's next proof that miracles were an impossibility?
Allman. Why, he said, so far as I could understand him, that the movements of Nature were not like those of a watch or of any other dead machine, which were given from without; for they proceed from her own inner life. Hence they are her own property so to speak : and as her life or action is not free, she cannot change, and her laws are in consequence unalterable. What do you say to that?
Browne. In the first place I deny that the movement of the watch is from without except! in its commencement, for during the twenty-four hours its movement is its own. Furthermore, I maintain that as in the machine the original movement comes from without, so is it in the things of Nature. There is a difference, I own, between them; but not here. But let us bring it down to common sense.
Allman. That's just the thing I want. I like things plain. None of your algebra for me, with its a×b—c. What can you get by adding two letters together? I can understand seven shillings added to nine; you can do that, and it's in the way of business.
Browne. Well, then, I say Nature was cither created, made by God, or it was not.
Allman. I suppose those chaps would say it was not.
Browne. Then Nature is God Himself,
Allman. Why so?
Browne. Because then it would be self-existent, and that is the great characteristic of God.
Allman. I don't see that plainly. Suppose the world was from everlasting?
Browne. That would make no difference.
Allman. No difference! But then it would be as old as God, equal to Him.
Browne. We know that it is not so; but just for argument's sake let us suppose it. The world would then certainly be as old as God, if we may use such a term, but not equal. God would always be first.
Allman. I can't take that in at all; for how could one be first if they were both always running together?
Browne. God would not be first in order of time; but He would still be first in two ways at least. He would be first in order of nature. I will show you what I mean by an illustration. Suppose that at the very moment Eve was created she had miraculously given birth to a son. In that case there would have been no first in order of time; but Eve would have been first in order of nature.
Allman. Why?
Browne. Because the son would have essentially depended on Eve for his life; whereas Eve, on the other hand, would not have had the slightest dependence on her son.
Allman. I see; that makes it very plain. What a head you have! as the frog said to the tadpole. But now for the second difference.
Browne. Well, God would be first in His life; for His life would be real eternity, unchanging—the entire possession of full being; whereas the creature's duration would be successive, like numbers are; and would still be measured, as now, by time; only it would be time a little changed from what it is now.
Allman. I think I see now that the eternity of the world would make no difference; so now let us suppose that Nature is God : for the lecturer said something like that. I think it was this, that Nature may be God gradually developing Himself. What say you to that?
Browne. Why, I say it is a most audacious piece of nonsense; for if God could develop Himself, He wouldn't be God. Either before this development He needed development or not. If He needed it, He couldn't be God, for God is perfect. If He didn't need it, it was folly, and God is Wisdom. In neither case could He be God, because God is unchangeable.
Allman. But let us send that development about its business. Couldn't Nature be God as she is? I am only putting it to you, Browne, to get clearer ideas about it, for I begin to see how that lecturer humbugged me.
Browne. What a worse than brutish absurdity! Just hold out your hand, my dear fellow.
(Allman did as he was bid, and Browne dipped a pencil into a glass of water that was by his side, and let fall a drop into his friends hand.)
Allman. What on earth are you about? Are you a Baptist, that you want to douse me again?
Browne. You see that drop of water on your hand? If you add to it billions upon billions of drops, will you ever make it oil or stone?
Allman. Browne, it's my decided opinion that you're docketed for Bedlam. They say your Cathedral in London is quite convenient to it. Of course the number of drops couldn't change the nature of the water, any more than if you muster a large army of soldiers, like it was in the late wars, the men would change into monkeys. I say, old fellow, you're trifling with one's common sense.
Browne. Yet that is precisely what you have just wished me in all seriousness to suppose. For what is Nature? Is it not the collection of all the things you perceive by your senses? And do not all these things begin and end?
Allman. No; the stars, sun, and moon don't.
Browne. I beg your pardon. According to the most approved modern theory, these heavenly bodies are formed out of nebular matter, and the work is now going on. But if they can begin, it is plain they can end.
Allman. Bother! I suppose I must give up the stars, then. Well, go on.
Browne. Do not all things change? Do not all things go on from rude beginnings to perfection? Do not they then decay? Is there not constant succession? So, then, out of a multitude of finites you make an infinite; out of a multitude of changeables you make an unchangeable; out of a multitude of imperfect things you make one infinitely perfect; out of a multitude of things of time you make an eternal. And how do you do it, forsooth? By gluing them all together! So you add to the absurdity by constituting out of an innumerable host the most perfect individual unity. Not only so; but you jumble together brute matter, vegetable, animal, and human life; and you transform this precious conglomerate into Him who must be pure spirit, infinitely simple, infinitely wise. I wonder who are the fittest inmates of Bedlam, they or I.
Allman. Hip, hip, hip, hoorah!—once more, hoorah! By jingo, Browne, you ought to have been in Parliament. Well, seriously, I must say you've settled that part of the business thoroughly. Their God is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, made up of gold, silver, iron, and miry clay. He's a regular hotch-potch.
Browne. Well, what else did this lecturer say?
Allman. Oh, let me see. Yes, I have it; he said that if there was a God, He didn't trouble Himself about Nature; He may have made it, if you like; but having done that, He left it to shift for itself. But that seems to me to be pitching it a little too strong. Besides, he never attempted to prove his assertion.
Browne. Prove it! I should just think not. Why, it is opposed to the plainest teaching of common sense! If Nature required a God to form it, it requires a God to preserve it; for the preservation of a thing is its continued creation. Let us imagine that a watch could speak; and after the watchmaker had put it together, it should say,' Thank you very much for what you have done; now you may go about your business, for I have no further need of you. I can regulate myself, wind myself up, set myself by the Exchange, repair myself'—what would you think of master watch?
Allman. Wo, you old English Plato; I have you now. You said a little while ago that the watch could go on by itself for the twenty-four hours. That tells against you rather than for you, it seems to me.
Browne. I am not beaten yet friend. For the watchmaker doesn't create, he only puts together; and he does not give motion to the wheels; he only uses the powers of motion which God has given to matter for his purpose. So necessary is God's presence and action to create being and motion of whatever kind, that, as a priest told me, you can prove by reason that if He were to absent Himself, so to say, the whole thing would collapse. We require, he told me, God's present aid even to lift our arm, or draw a breath, or think a thought. You know the old saying, that a comparison is always lame in one of its limbs.
Allman. My dear Browne, what a fearful idea that doctrine of yours gives one of God's presence! I seem to understand better now what you once said to me, that good Catholics should always be living in another world.
Browne. Yes, there is something quite overpowering in the Presence of God, when you pause to realise it. For He is, first of all present in us by the ceaseless workings and co-operation of His omnipotence and most loving providence. Then he is present by His infinite wisdom everywhere in this creation :'Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked, and opened unto the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do' (Heb. iv. 13). Lastly, He is omnipresent by the necessity of His own essential Being; for there is no place where God is not. You see, by the mere contrast, how impossible it is even to imagine God deserting His creation for one single instant. The inevitable result would be a universal annihilation.
Allman. I see what you mean. It is most true, and that
Browne. Well, we will see. First tell me what you mean by law.
Allman. I'm shut up; as the donkey said when they popped him into the pound. You say what it is.
Browne. By a law, then, I understand a settled order, imposed by one that has authority for the general good.
Allman. Very well; I don't see anything to object to in that. But what can you make out of it?
Browne. Why, I think it is plain, from the very idea of law, if I have explained it rightly, that a law supposes a lawgiver—some one, that is, who has authority to impose his rule on others.
Allman. That's as true as Gospel. But what of that?
Browne. Well, if this lawgiver has power to make the order, I think it is pretty plain that he has power to unmake it.
Allman. Certainly, that is as plain as A B C. And I don't know what they'd do when Parliament sits if it wasn't; for most of their time is taken up with repealing laws they made the last session, or else in dressing them up in a new set of clothes.
Browne. If, then, there are laws of Nature, there must have been a lawgiver, who can be no other than God. If therefore God has, in His infinite Wisdom, constituted a definite order in His creation, it follows that He has the absolute power of changing that order, or suspending it, on occasion, according to His good pleasure. Hence it follows that He can work a miracle; so it isn't impossible after all.
Allman. I own that is just what I thought. But the lecturer quoted some big-wig or other, whom he seemed to make a great fuss about, as saying that the phrase, 'a law of Nature,' is, strictly speaking, an incorrect expression; so that, according to him, your argument, which—to do him justice,—he brought forward, breaks down; because it is built up on a simple metaphor.
Browne. Be it so. But it is a metaphor common to every civilised language, as I am told. How is that, if there is no truth at the bottom of it? Is, then, a universal thought a lie? But—to pass this by—what is this so-called law of Nature, if it is not really a law? I will answer my own question. It is a settled order in everything that our senses perceive. Thus turnip-seed always results in turnips, dogs produce dogs; leaves always fall in winter, and fresh leaves appear again in spring. After June the days begin to get shorter, and after December they begin to get longer. Now where did that order come from?
Allman. I suppose they would say from the things them-selves.
Browne. Is not that the height of absurdity? Has a geranium the thought or power to pass on its own particular nature to its offspring? What is to prevent the seed of the geranium develop-ing into an apple-tree? Surely, if there is order, there must be a mind to conceive, and a power to preserve that order; and that mind and power must be outside the things that are ordered or arranged; since the order for stalls their existence. Nothing can order itself before it exists.
Allman. But some of them say it may happen by a sort of fate or chance.
Browne. Chance, indeed! Put billions on billions of the letter A in a bag, as many of the letter B, and so on, to the end of the alphabet—shake them together and empty them out, alternately, to the day of judgment, if you like—would chance ever compose one play of Shakespeare, or fate either, for the matter of that? And if chance did it once, could it do it a hundred times, or even twice? What fools men become, when they would be wiser than God!
Allman. True for you there! But I say, Browne, that lecturer made a remark on this point which I couldn't see the way to answer. He said that the fact was enough for us; we couldn't get further. Our senses teach us that an acorn always becomes an oak, and that frost freezes water. That's certain; but as for the why and the wherefore, we could know nothing; and it is folly to bother ourselves about it.
Browne. A very modest invitation to reduce ourselves to a level with brute beasts, and to make good our title of being nothing better than sublimated apes. I will say nothing of the wondrous consistency that makes the senses infallible, at the expense of consciousness and the understanding. But here is the beauty of it. If we know, can know, nothing but the facts, physical science is all moonshine. For how many facts have we observed ourselves? How often, for instance, have you seen turnip-seed become turnips—you yourself, I mean, Allman? And if you had seen it a million times—whereas I doubt whether you have seen it twice—how are you to tell that the million-and-oneth time it may not grow up into hemlock? What is there reasonably to assure us that the bread of to-day may not be strychnine to-morrow? Mere facts live in the past and present only; of themselves they are no prophets.
Allman. I see that clearly. Of mere facts you can never make a rule; so there could be no real knowledge, not even of the things necessary for life. Well, we have come to a pretty pass, if that's it. I go to the baker's for a loaf of bread—a quartern. He gives it to me over the counter. Says I, 'Are
Browne. You see, Allman, everybody must be everything in our times. If these respectable gentlemen would keep to their skeletons, and leave philosophy and theology to those whose business it is, the world would be happier, and they would be more useful to their fellows. But such modesty is only to be found in company with true wisdom.
Allman. You're right, old fellow. Now, then, for the lecturer's other arguments.
Browne. Not to-day, Allman. We have worked both our heads at this as much as is good for us.
Allman. So be it, then. Well, I must say you have taken a weight off my mind, Browne. I feel quite a different sort of bird from what I was when I came here just now. I tell you what it seems to me; men are very foolish to put themselves in the way of all this blather um skite, unless they have thought much on such things. It's like those foolish fellows who put their heads into the lion's mouth for show, and take their chance of his keeping his jaws stretched. I think it's better to let well alone, and not be over-curious about new-fangled notions, unless they happen to be in our own line of business. Good-bye, old fellow. Thanks to you, I go home a happy man.
Browne. No, Allman. Let me change that phrase of yours. 'Thanks to God.' God bless you!
rowne was stretched out on the sofa in his little back parlour, taking forty winks after his early dinner, and the Careful Mrs Browne had given strict orders to the children to be as quiet as mice, and not wake up dear papa, when in rushed our impetuous friend Allman, before—luckily for him—the good lady had espied him. For Mrs Browne, like a good wife as she was, would not permit any one, no matter who it was, to interfere with her husband's little nap, which she considered absolutely necessary for him to enable him to go through the labours of the day. Allman was then most decidedly contraband, however welcome at other times; and it was fortunate for him that, owing to a chance visit of hers to the kitchen, he was able to smuggle himself through. 'Halloo!' said Browne, rising abruptly from the sofa, and rubbing his eyes as though they were unwilling to open properly except under compulsion; 'halloo! who'd have thought of seeing you here at this time of day? I thought it was your dinner hour.'
Allman. So it is, as a rule, Browne, my boy But the old lady is going out shopping this afternoon, and put the dinner half an hour earlier; so I ran down here as soon as I had swallowed my victuals, because—to tell you the honest truth—I couldn't contain myself to myself. But I'm sorry I've waked you up from your snooze.
Browne. Never mind me, my dear fellow. But what has put you into such spirits?
Allman. Well, when I left you, my heart was as gay as a lark; and so home I trudged, and found the old woman and Gronout cheek by jowl. I couldn't keep it in, and—what's more
Browne. There I quite agree with you. But still, Allman, you mustn't be too hard upon these poor people. Our God is infinitely good and merciful; and in the midst of all this repulsive cant there are not a few dear souls who know no better, and who feed on the many scraps of truth which were originally pilfered from the Catholic creed, and often put us Catholics to shame. Wherever there is a sincere love for Jesus Christ, God will provide. But now for the rest of the lecturer's objections to miracles, for I know you have come to have it all out.
Allman. You have hit it to a T. So then he went on to say that, even supposing the laws of Nature were not of themselves unchangeable, it would be morally impossible for God to change them.
Browne. And why, pray?
Allman. Because, he said, if He were to change them, the fact would show that He was changeable Himself.
Browne.I am afraid my answer to your lecturer will not be an easy one, for you see, the subject itself is difficult of its own nature; but I will do my best.
Allman. All right, old boy. My brains want stirring up a bit; and if I don't understand, I'll tell you so.
Browne. Good. Well, now, I must go thoroughly into the matter, or it's no use. And, as the lecturer's assertion is very vague, I will suppose all the answers I can think of.
Allman. Fire away; as the hare said with a wink to the Cockney sportsman.
Browne. First of all, then, he may mean that God would change, because He would be doing a fresh thing. For instance, if I am sitting down, and I then begin to walk, there's a certain change in me. So, it may be argued, if God does this and then does that, He changes too. But I do not think he could mean that, because such an argument would make God perfectly idle throughout His whole eternity. If He ever created, if He continues ceaselessly to preserve things, He would be changing with each fresh act.
Allman. No; I'm sure he didn't mean that. However, as you have mentioned it, I should be glad to know how it is He is not changed. Could you just give it me simply in a few words?
Browne. He changes not, though ever active, because of His infinite perfection. God's life is one pure act, which is equivalent to infinite acts: and He is never merely capable of doing, or willing, or thinking. He does, wills, thinks, all at once and for ever. Therefore He is unchanging. I speak, of course, of the act in His own Being, not of the relation of the object to His will or thought.
Allman. My eye! That beats me to fits. Can't you make it just a bit plainer? Some example, you know?
Browne. Well, I will try. But you must remember that comparisons in such matters are at the best miserably wanting. Take the focus of a magic-lantern, when the light is inside. We will put in different slides. The light has not changed; the focus has not changed; but the figures on the sheet change. 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all' (1 St John i. 5).
Allman. Bravo! bravo! I see it. The things which God wills change and come and go; but He sticks fast, like the focus. That'll do famously; and how jollily that text conies in!
Browne. So far, so good. Now then, if he did not mean that, he might have meant that if God worked a miracle, that necessarily supposes that He first made a law in Nature, and then afterwards changed His mind. But if this were so, God's will would be changeable.
Allman. There you've hit it—at least, partly. For he said more than that. But tell me your answer to this, first.
Browne. Oh, it is easy enough. All the laws of Nature, their constant operation, their occasional suspension, were all together included from everlasting in the one infinite and infinitely simple decree of God's perfect will.
Allman. I say, ain't you going it just? Why, this is harder than ever. Put it, please, in another way for me.
Browne. Well, you see, when God from the beginning decreed in his will to create, He decreed everything at once,—the different kind of things, their exact number, the peculiarities of each individual,—the laws that were to govern them, and each miracle, or suspension of a given law. So from all eternity He decreed the miracles, each and all, that were to take place, as well as the laws of which they were the exception.
Allman. But how could He do that? I am at sea again. Do try and help me with another example.
Browne. Very good; I will try my best. Suppose you were to take your family down to Southport in the summer. You take a season ticket and determine to run down every evening except Tuesday, we will say, because you want to make up your books on that day. Do you not see that by one and the same decree of your will you have determined upon a certain law of action, and also upon an occasional exception to that law?
Allman. Yes; I see that plainly.
Browne. Well, then, if you can do it in a certain particular case, and yet not change your mind, could not God, the infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, living in His own eternity, do it in the whole course of His designs, without changing His mind?
Allman. Clear as a summer lake, old fellow. It's prime. I say, how delightful it is to think about such things, when the light comes in upon them! It lifts one up so; and yet, hang me, if it doesn't knock you down at the same time. It makes one feel oneself so small in midst of this Everywhere Always.
Browne. Did your lecturer give you any other reason for supposing that God's will must be changeable, if He works miracles?
Allman. I don't remember at this moment that he did. The fact is, I have forgotten a great deal of what he said now, because the new thought you have put before me have driven them out of my head.
Browne. Then I will take up the cudgels on the infidel side, and give you another difficulty myself. You will admit with me that the moral laws are immutable, and God cannot change them. He never could will any of His creatures to tell a lie, or to commit adultery, or to dishonour their parents, or to blaspheme His own most holy Name. If therefore God cannot, on any occasion or under any circumstances, violate His own moral laws, because to do so would argue not only a change, but
Allman. By Jove, it is just what the lecturer said. You have brought it all back again. But I tell you what, I was not at all sure that God couldn't violate His moral laws, or change them; because He did change the observance of the Sabbath to the Sunday, or, at all events, He sanctioned its being done; and that's in the ten commandments, you know.
Browne. Quite true. But that commandment forms no part of the moral law, properly so called i it is what is called a positive law.
Allman. I tell you what, I'm positive I haven't a ghost of a notion what you mean by your positive law.
Browne. Oh, that's simple enough.
Allman. I daresay it may be to you, but it isn't simple to me. Just explain a bit, my boy.
Browne. All right. Well, the moral law is that rule of action which of its own nature is essentially right, and cannot be conceived as otherwise than right; like, for instance, the duty of not dishonouring God in our talk, or the duty of being just in our dealings. Nothing could ever justify us in blaspheming or cheating, even though they were not forbidden and punished by the magistrate. But a positive law—I mean one that is merely such—orders or forbids things which are not of themselves right or wrong, but only become so after the law has been made. For instance, there would have been no harm in Eve eating the apple if God had not forbidden it. And there would be nothing morally good in acquainting the registrar with a death in a family, if the law did not require it; whereas now it is an act of obedience to constituted authority.
Allman. I see. Of itself the action is neither good nor bad; but the law comes, and makes it the one or the other. But now I have got into a worse mess. For if God cannot change the moral law, there's something He can't do; so that after all He is not omnipotent. What do you say to that?
Browne. Why, that there are somethings which God cannot do; because if He could do them He could destroy Himself, which is absurd. He cannot lie because he is truth itself. He cannot do evil, because He is goodness itself. He cannot change the moral law, because the moral law is His own justice and sanctity; and if He could, He would not be God.
'Prithee, peace: I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.'Allman. That makes it as plain as the sun at noonday. It puts me in mind of two lines in Shakespeare, when Lady Macbeth is persuading her husband to murder the old gentleman in bed:
But now I don't see how God can change His physical laws any more than the moral. I suppose they were the best laws under the circumstances, and how can He better the best? But if He can't do that, then there is no good reason for changing.
Browne. You have made two assumptions which I should deny. First of all, you suppose that God was obliged to choose the best order in His creation. That you could never prove. Our reason teaches us that the order He establishes must be good, but not necessarily the best. Next, you suppose that God changes the established law when He works miracles; whereas if He did they would cease to be miracles. What He does is to suspend the operation of the law.
Allman. I'm off the rails again, and unless you help me, there will be a smash-up.
Browne. Well, look here. When Nabuchodonosor ordered the three youths to be cast into the fiery furnace, do you suppose that the fire had lost its power of burning things up?
Allman. No, I know it didn't, because it killed the officers who put the three Hebrew lads into the flames.
Browne. Do you not see, then, that the natural law by which fire burns was not changed; God only prevented it from using its power against His servants. If He had changed the law, the others would not have suffered; and as it would soon be known that fire had become harmless, there would be no further miracle. The law therefore was suspended in the particular case of those three youths.
Allman. I understand it now plain enough. But God cannot suspend the moral law, can He?
Browne. Certainly not.
Allman. Well, then, the lecturer's argument has something to say for itself, it seems to me.
Browne. Not a rap, my friend. Don't you remember my pointing out to you that if God were, in any given instance, to suspend the moral law as such, He would be destroying Himself, and making wrong right? That would never do. But surely your common sense will tell you that if, on a certain occasion, fire ceases to burn, or iron swims, or a wooden stick becomes a serpent, or a dead man comes to life again, it can make no change in our idea of God's perfection. There is nothing to shock us in that. It is not essential to the universal order that fire should burn—I mean, if God had arranged it otherwise, it would have made no difference in our idea of Him. It is like a positive law; and there is therefore no reason why He should not give a dispensation in a particular instance, if it be His good pleasure.
Allman. That's very clear too. It God were to tell me to curse and swear, I should have a right to say He cannot be God. But if He told me to eat a book for my dinner, as He told St. John, I should be surprised at first, but of course I should do it, and I should only say it was very good of Him if I found I got fat on such food. I am sure I wish He would do something of that sort, for I begin to suspect a great number of our modern books are of no use as they are.
Browne. Come, that does my heart good. I didn't expect as much from you yet. Go on and prosper.
Allman. There you are, at me again! Never mind, I've broad shoulders. But I haven't done with you yet, for that lecturer brought another thumper against miracles which had almost slipped my mind.
Browne. Well, what is this next terrible giant of yours?
Allman. At me again! However, you've a right to be bumptious, for I must say you knock 'em down like nine-pins, as soon as I set 'em up. And yet they seemed to me regular ungetoverables at the time. I say, how easy it is to bamboozle a man, if you only listen to one side of a question!
Browne. True for you there, as you would say. But now for your difficulty.
Allman. Why, Mr Rookson said, that if we allow the possibility of miracles, we must be prepared to own that God was not thoroughly up to His work at the beginning, and learned better by experience.
Browne. Oh, that's it, is it? First attack the infinite perfection and immutability of His will; then, if that will not do, attack the perfection and immutability of His intellect! And how did he attempt to make good this assertion, I should like to know?
Allman. Well, he said that if miracles were required to patch up God's government of Nature, His original scheme must have been faulty, and Nature could not have been created good at the first.
Browne. But I deny most indignantly the blasphemous idea that miracles were required to patch up faults in Nature.
Allman. Of course. But the lecturer said it must be so; for either there was some physical disorder that wanted mending, or there wasn't. If there was, then the miracles are mere patchwork, as he said; if there was not, then why is it that God didn't let well alone? There's no reasonable room for a miracle. There, I've put it well this time, I amagine.
Browne. Oh; the wiseacre! Don't you see that this supposes there is nothing real but matter, and what meets the senses?
Allman. No; I don't.
Browne Why, my dear fellow, it supposes that God has nothing higher or nobler to look after in the world than to see that fire burns, corn feeds, the sun warms, and all that sort of thing.
Allman. I don't see it. Do, for Heaven's sake, explain what you mean. You're like a Chinese puzzle.
Browne. You must have patience then, and I will try to be as short as I can.
Allman. Never mind its being short, if it only settles the matter; as the poor fellow said to Jack Ketch, who was in a quandary about the rope.
Browne. You see, then, that there are two different orders over which God's good Providence extends?
Allman. Oh, bother the orders! You were at them once before, and I couldn't, for the life of me, make out where I was, like a plum in a Christmas pudding at school. I know what an order for the play is, and I know what an order of the mayor means, and I am quite alive to receiving an order in the shop; but when you talk to me of spiritual order, my head gets into disorder. My ideas are all in a maze. So just try and be more simple.
Browne. Well, you see, God rules over souls as well as bodies. Now, His rule over bodies, living bodies, including our own, or inanimate matter, is called the physical order, whereas His rule over our souls constitutes the moral order. So there are two orders. You won't object my using the words now that I have explained them, will you?
Allman. No. I understand what you mean now. Go on; I'm all attention.
Browne. I suppose you, at all events, will not deny that the moral order is of immeasurably greater importance than the physical order, just as the soul is of so much more value than the body?
Allman. Of course; there's no denying that, if a man believes in the existence of a soul.
Browne. Very well; then it follows that the physical order should be subservient to the moral. This whole visible world was created for man's sake, and he is its appointed master. It was appointed to act upon him, as he was to act upon it, in order that by its help he might serve and love God, and, by so doing, save his soul. Now if God knew, as He did, that by a temporary suspension of the physical order He could so influence the free-will of man, in any given cases, as to ensure the preservation of the moral order, that suspension would depend on most reasonable motives, and would not be a patching-up business,
Allman. Most true, indeed. But couldn't God have done it some other way? It seems, at first sight, as if it would have been better to keep the two orders distinct and independent.
Browne. Of course, my dear friend, God could have done it some other way, if He had so pleased; but I quite disagree with you as to the advantage of keeping the two orders independent. I see two very startling reasons for His thus bringing them together. The first is, that He thus impresses upon us the true value of Nature as the original, universal, never-ceasing revelation of Himself, and not, as these infidels make it, the mere plaything of their pride and sensual caprice. A miracle serves wondrously to this, for it is an extraordinary homage paid by Nature to its Lord and Master. The second reason, which has even more effect on me, is that this union of orders is a sort of expression of the inexpressible oneness of God. In that consists the beauty of the universal order. I will make my meaning clearer by an illustration. Some astronomers have maintained that comets are the planets of the central system, of which our solar system, and millions of others gathering round their several suns, are parts. I have no reason to know that this theory has been accepted; but it will serve my purpose all the same; so we will suppose, for the moment, it is true. Now, in earlier times, the regular movements of these comets were unknown, and their unexpected coming was a cause of terror and alarm. They are not accounted for, on this theory, in our system, but they belong to another higher central order. So is it with a miracle. It comes darting along the physical order with its vivid train of light, and startles us into sober recollection; but it is all along the well-ordered satellite of a higher and regulating order, which, proceeding from the one God, is the centre and unity of His Providence.
Allman. Browne, Browne, you are right and I was wrong. I like that idea of the comet immensely; it gives me such a clear, just, startling idea of a miracle. The moral order shoots it out; and there it goes blazing away into the physical; and all the people gape up at it and say, 'God help us and save us, what's coming now?' and they get frightened or astonished, and begin to think about the next world. What a nuisance it is that people will look at things outside them with only one eye, and that a squinter! Fancy that lecturer telling us that there was a grand
Browne. Oh, I know. And they are blind to their own gross inconsistencies all along, these materialists; not perceiving how completely they are cutting away the ground from under their own feet.
Allman. Eh, what's that? I'm at sea again. 'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry,' as the poet says.
Browne. Why, don't you see that their only knowledge of the laws of Nature depends entirely on the trustworthiness of their senses; so that if they are reasonable in distrusting their evidence in the case of a miraculous suspension of those laws, they have no possible right to know that there are any laws to suspend. That a thing happens a thousand times instead of once doesn't make the eyesight better.
Allman. That's a settler, as Robinson Crusoe said to his man Friday. So they're not such grand philosophers after all, these gents. I shouldn't like to buy them at their own valuation, and sell them at market price. I'm afeard it would be rather a losing transaction. I say Browne, their cotton has passed through a strong bath, more than a hundred per cent, of damp, eh? The market's rather overstocked though, just at present, with damaged goods.
Browne. Yes; they come from their galvanic batteries and museum of bones and collection of fossils, without knowing the alphabet of philosophy or theology, and star it about in lecture-rooms and mechanics institutes, as if they were heaven-sent evangelists. And the worst of it is that people, who know no better, swallow down all their sophisms and shallow infidelity, without venturing to use their common sense; and the more inconsequent it is, the better they are pleased, if only it is dressed up in well-turned phrases and happy illustrations, with a deal of dogmatism and self-assurance. There is one consolation; a lie cannot last for ever. But in the mean time, what ruin to souls!
These Lectures were originally delivered to the Writer's congregation, and published at their request. The author has had abundant cause for believing that they were useful to many : and, at the request of others, a new publishes them, trusting they may build up some in their most holy Faith.
Dunedin, th June, 1876
Your attention has often been turned to the fact that the Gospel can obtain no proper hold of us so long as any sinful passion is nourished in the heart or life. A secret sin acts upon the wholesome word of God like some vicious disease which neutralizes all the effects of air and food, and even converts into poison what in itself and for a sound body is nourishment. This is indeed the reason why so many are ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. But attention has not been so frequently directed to the kindred fact that an idea or opinion may in such a manner haunt the mind that the Truth can obtain no proper access to it, and the Gospel in no effectual manner leaven the heart. A sceptical or semi-sceptical thought may act as viciously as a secret sin; aye, even an invincible doubt or an unresolved difficulty may be—for many a mind actually is—like an impenetrable cloud between its gaze and the face of Christ. It is found, to take an example, that the thought of the vastness of the physical universe and of this earth as being only like a vanishing point in space—the thought that the world, with all that it contains, might be annihilated, and no more missed out of the universe than a speck of dust floating in the sunbeam—can in such a manner haunt the mind and bewilder the imagination, as to make it impossible to believe in the Incarnation
It will be necessary to commence by stating the
It will not be denied by any man that the Scriptures teach the doctrine of Providence. He may count it a delusion or superstition, but he will not deny that Christ taught it. There are few ideas more thoroughly pervading and impregnating the whole body of Scripture. We are taught that God rules in the world as a father in his family, with at once a general care and a particular interest in each. 'In the application of law in Nature, the terms great and small are unknown;' so also in Divine Providence: God attends equally to what we call great and to what we call small—to the great king whose volition vibrates through an empire, and to a little child—the flight of a comet and the falling of a sparrow—the countless hosts of heaven and the hairs of our heads. The immediate will of God extends to everything. He appointed the day of my birth, and He has appointed the day of my death. He has appointed and arranged all the circumstances of my life. Not a blessing has ever descended on my head but He sent it, not a sorrow ever befallen me but He commissioned it. Not a friend was ever raised up to help me but God had sent him : not a foe ever cursed me but God had bidden him : not a dark and cloudy day has ever dawned upon me but 'twas His holy will The sword, the famine, and the pestilence have never awaked to smite a nation but God summoned them; nor did they ever stay their ravages till His voice said, 'Hitherto!—but no further!' The stormy wind fulfils God's word, and goes forth, as if it were an intelligent angel, to execute God's message to the very letter. God keeps in His hands the treasures
And what, now, is the Scripture teaching in regard to Prayer? We are taught that our Prayer becomes an actual power that brings results to pass, which shapes and determines what transpires otherwise than it would have been without it. You have seen a lecturer on chesmistry pour water into a vessel, then add to it some ingredient which instantly coloured it, then another which changed the colour, then another which resolved the elements into isolation, then another which produced a new composition and a new colour. For every element introduced there was a new effect; withdraw any one element, and there is a different result. Now, we are taught that prayer introduced into a man's life is an element producing an effect and
It can scarcely be questioned that this is what the Scriptures teach : but attempts are frequently made to explain away great part of the fulness and the fearless sweep of the Christian doctrine. For example, it has sometimes been said that the effect of prayer is wholly subjective, that the exercise of prayer reacts upon the mind of the suppliant with an elevating, soothing, bracing influence, that herein alone lies all its use and virtue, and that this is the answer to prayer that it answers itself. Undoubtedly the very act of prayer has in it a blessing, and it has, of all things, the most salutary reactionary influence upon our moral nature; at the same time it is manifest that it does so only so long as we earnestly believe in its prevailing power with God—that its subjective virtue is nourished by a persuasion of its objective validity. The moment a man entertains the idea that prayer is only self-discipline, his heart becomes the grave of prayer, his lips will refuse to frame one true petition. The doctrine that prayer has only subjective force is suicidal, and strikes a death-blow at the very roots of prayer. Again, it has sometimes been said that the power of prayer must be limited to spiritual things, but wholly kept out of things physical—that it is right to pray for pardon,
Having now stated the doctrine of Scripture con-
Let me here say, before proceeding, that while with full assent I believe Christ's teaching concerning Providence and Prayer, I do none the less fully accept the fact that the world is governed by General Laws, and acknowledge that the doctrine of Science is established beyond all doubt. I should despair if I had in any way to throw doubt or discredit on the doctrine of General Laws in order to defend my Christian belief. I believe that what Christ says is true. I believe that what Science has established is true. My task will be to show that there is no necessary contradiction between the two beliefs.
Let me now proceed to state the fact or doctrine which modern Science has lifted up into such clear light and huge proportions : and this we shall do in a popular way, without aiming at scientific precision of statement. Experience teaches even a child that nature is uniform and regular, that the properties of matter are not one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, but so fixed and invariable that we can infallibly calculate upon their action. Fire always burns. Cork always floats. Heavy bodies always fall to the ground. Water always rises to the level of its source. A man need not put his hand in the fire and expect Providence to prevent his being burnt: he will be burnt although a thousand saints were praying that he might not be. Submerge a man under water for a couple of minutes, and he will be drowned; no prayer will prevent it any more than shouting at the moon will stop an eclipse.
This is unquestionably true. Nature acts uniformly, not capriciously and at haphazard. Not only are the properties of matter invariable, but the more carefully we look, the further we penetrate, the more clearly we perceive that nature acts according to definite laws, that there is an invariable order of sequences in nature, that certain things always happen together or in immediate succession, that one thing given, something else is at hand, or will follow, and cannot be prevented. Given a certain intensity of cold, water always becomes ice: given a certain amount of heat, water becomes vapour. Given a certain mineral, say a poison like arsenic, in the human body, and life is destroyed—no power can prevent it. Given a certain state of the atmosphere, and fever or cholera appears immediately: restore the atmosphere, the pestilence disappears as darkness flies when the sun rises. Given certain conditions of air and light, and dew falls—otherwise, never, although hecatombs were offered. All this is unquestionably true. Thus men begin to learn that the kingdom of nature is surrendered to them, and that they can predict. So steady, so uniform, so invariable is nature, that we can predict—in certain departments with infallible accuracy—what will come to pass. To untutored minds and more ignorant ages, nothing seemed so arbitrary and so manifest an interference of the Deity as a comet or eclipse; but now we can calculate on the very hour when a comet will return, when an eclipse will commence and depart. An astronomer will tell you to a second when such events will occur next century, with as much certainty as if he were inspired by God. But law reigns just as triumphantly in all other departments, although we cannot predict in departments where the results of so many laws are all inextricably interwoven, where so many subtle forces are all linked together. Yet no one doubts that law is everywhere. The gyrations of a
That we are now confronted with a formidable difficulty must be apparent to every one. It lies upon the very surface—happily just upon the surface. The difficulty has existed ever since the uniformity of Nature was observed: Science has only made it more prominent. It is very long since men asked, where is there room for an immediate Providence in this iron-bound world? And what can prayer do? Only now men are saying so more loudly as Science has found law a little further back. Reserving the task of explanation and reconciliation to the next lecture, let me add some not unnecessary remarks on the fact of the Government of the World by Law.
It might seem to you that it would have been a great advantage to religion if things had been otherwise arranged—that if Nature had been less uniform and
It is manifest that if the laws of nature were not uniform, if the course of nature were not fixed and invariable, life and action would be impossible. If fire burned to-day and cooled to-morrow : if to-day it fused iron, and to-morrow hardened it: if to-day wood floated in water and to-morrow sank, and all the laws of specific gravity were for ever shifting: if to-day a substance were nutritious and to-morrow poisonous: we should be like men paralyzed. We live with energy, we plan with deliberation, we put down our foot with firmness, because we walk among certainties, in an ordered world, where all things are uniform. Who would build a house if to-day stones flew upwards and to-morrow fell downwards? Who would sink a well if to-day water rose to its level and to-morrow became inert as sand? Who would plough or sow if the rotation of the seasons were not fixed? Surely, a world so arranged that we could not live, and could not act, would scarcely reveal God or help us to be devout.
But further: we cannot even imagine an intelligent Creator governing the world in any other way than by a system of fixed and invariable laws—laws so perfect that they need no make-shift expedients to supplement them. It is the mark of a child to be wayward and capricious. The undeveloped reason has no principles, no calculation, and no foresight. Can you imagine the Creator acting like a capricious child in the government of the world? You regard method, uniformity of regulated action, as the characteristic of rational manhood. If a man live waywardly, not uni-
That the properties of matter are invariable, that the course of nature is uniform, that a system of fixed laws girds the whole creation, and that they will yield to no entreaty of ours, but sweep on with deaf ears,—must be conceded by us, not only as to a proved theory, but as simple matter of fact and every day experience. The question then immediately forces itself upon us, How can every effect be regarded as expression of an immediate volition of the Creator? How can there be a universal personal interference of God at every point and in every occurrence? What possible use can there be in Prayer? In ages past, when the universal reign of law was unknown, as we now know it, the difficulty was lightly felt—it was easier to believe in Divine interpositions. But now when one and another and another supposed interference of God has been resolved into the natural, God seems to be receding further and further from our grasp. The Greek believed that the Sun was a god who drove his chariot across the sky: the suggestion, that it was a luminous body, was denounced as savouring of impiety : it seemed to banish God out of the heavens and substitute a lump of dead matter. Was it not a much more religious theory to believe that the Sun was a god driving a fiery chariot? Our fathers saw an immediate interference of God in
That there is a difficulty is apparent, but it is necessary to discern precisely where the difficulty lies and what it is. If a workman proceed to rectify any piece
A world governed by law is supposed to leave no room for the immediate interpositions of a living will. It is supposed that God does not hear prayer, does not will to hear prayer, or that God cannot hear prayer, having put an obstacle in his own way: but these two ways of putting it really come to the same thing. We may state the matter thus: 'Seeing it is the manifest will of God to govern the world by fixed laws, it is therefore his manifest will not to hear prayer. The world is an intricate, clever machine, like a watch. God winds it up and sets it a-going. He never interferes, but lets it run its mechanical course.' On this statement I shall meanwhile offer only one remark: Seeing a man can construct a machine, say a steam engine, and set it in motion, and yet is never as it were quite outside of it, but with his brain and hand guides it, regulates it, and interferes in it, in perfect harmony with its laws and by means of them making it execute his behests at every moment—seeing that this is true of a man and his work, it seems a strange thing that the Infinite Mind should not guide and regulate the machine of creation, causing it to do His will, all in sweetest harmony with its laws and by means of them. Do God's works fetter God more
manifest contradiction to natural laws.' And again : 'We sometimes pray for a miracle when we do not intend it' This then is perhaps the most precise way in which the difficulty can be stated—the hearing of prayer supposes a miracle—countless miracles, whereas we know that they are not wrought, and nature's course never violated. If then we could show that the hearing of prayer does not require the supposition of a miracle, or that prayer may be heard and nature's courses suffer no violation and no suspension, we should sufficiently answer the difficulty which surrounds the doctrine of Providence and Prayer arising from the government of the world by Law. I believe that this can be done. But we must proceed leisurely, and shall start at a point further back. A leisurely course will be the most satisfactory in the end.
1. It will be admitted that our assertions ought always to be cautious just in proportion to the density of our ignorance in the departments in which they are made : we call by no polite name the man who affirms dogmatically where his ignorance is so great that an important element which might qualify or change his
You would imagine, to hear some men speaking about what God does do, does not do, and cannot do, that they had climbed up into a region where there is a light shining like the sun at noon. Would you credit it that they are walking among inscrutable mysteries, themselves being witness? They speak much about matter, properties of matter, and laws of matter, and have got into a way of speaking as if matter were the grand essence and substance which confronted God like some granite wall. Not one of them knows what matter is—a profound mystery meets them at the very threshold. You take a stone in your hand. What is it? It is something hard, cold, coloured, and so on. But what is hardness? To a hand a thousand times stronger it would be soft. What is coldness? It is all relative to your own senses. What is colour? It is a perception of your own eye—in it, not in the object. And what is that something which is hard, cold, coloured? Who can tell? Matter seems to melt away before the gaze of the mind. It melts away, too, in the laboratory of science. "Under the analysis of the Physiologist, the Chemist, and the Electrician, matter dissolves and disappears, surviving only as the phenomena of Force." (Argyle's Reign of Law, p. 116.) "Heat and Light are only modes of motion," says Tyndall. It seems to be one of the admitted conclusions of science that Matter
am, streaming its energy through the universe? Who dares deny that that is possible? Who, then, dares pronounce dogmatically on the relation in which God stands to things which come to pass? Again: Science is never weary speaking about the causes of things, is ever assigning the causes of phenomena, and is supposed to explain things when it assigns causes for them. Are you aware that men of science admit that they do not know the real and true cause of anything? We know only a certain invariable order of sequences. We know the fact that Hydrogen and Oxygen in certain quantities of each produce or become Water: but why or how no man knows. We know the fact that seeds sown in the ground germinate : but why or how no man knows. The true productive and efficient causes always elude our grasp. And if we know not the real cause of anything, shall we make bold to affirm that the immediate volition of God causes nothing? never operates? It remains at least possible that the volition of the Creator is imme-diate cause of everything? I affirm, then, that seeing we know not what matter is, know not what force is, know not what the true cause of anything is, and seeing that the relation in which the Infinite Mind stands to the Creation must needs be above our comprehension, it must be pronounced rash and reckless to affirm
be God? What if the veil which shrouds matter, force, and cause be the evil which He wears upon His face, of whom it is written—"Thou art a God who hidest thyself,"—"who coverest thyself with light as with a garment?"
2. There is now a second point to which we shall do well to direct our attention. The doctrine of the government of the world by General Laws is admitted to be true : at the same time that doctrine is often misapprehended, misstated, and exaggerated, and just in these misapprehensions, misstatements, and exaggerations is found to lie no small part of our whole difficulty. It is amazing how the atmosphere clears when they are removed. We speak of the order of nature as fixed, rigid, inexorable, invariable; and in a certain sense it is undoubtedly so. But in what sense? There is also a sense in which the order of nature is not fixed, not rigid, not inexorable, and not invariable. Nature is full of Law : but at the same time the word 'Law' carries with it a misleading association, for the laws of nature are not hard and unbending, but of all things the most yielding and pliable. Nature is not built of blocks of granite and not forged of adamant; nature were just as fitly compared to softened wax or to the yielding waves of the sea.
Let us look into the kingdom of nature. Nature is just a great storehouse of materials with definite properties, or a geat magazine of forces and power of definite quality—materials and forces which are being constantly arranged in ceaseless varieties, which are capable of being assorted, adjusted, and manipulated in
Argyll's Reign of Law, p. 99.
The fact to which I am now calling your attention may be brought out again from yet another point of view. Looking again into the kingdom of nature, we see an almost boundless variety in the effects produced : no two things, however similar, are absolutely alike: and there is thus made upon us the impression of the working of a hand which moves with consummate ease and skill among most subtle and obedient elements. When we look more narrowly, it almost seems to us as if nothing were ever done twice, or ever done twice the same way, as if there were a ceaseless separation and new arrangements of properties and forces, and as if every effect was the result of an endless number of antecedents, the result of ten thousand concurrent causes inextricably inter-linked. Let us take a very familiar example of the way in which a result is brought to pass. A man goes out on a cold, raw, winter's night: he catches cold: the cold becomes pleurisy or fever, and he dies. We familarly say, His going out that given night was the cause of his death. But how many links lie between the cause and the effect? The temperature of the atmosphere from which he went out—the state of the body he was in—the food of which he partook—the medicine which he
voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars. By the breathing of the Lord frost is given. He looketh on the earth and it trembleth. He toucheth the hills and they smoke. Ye looked for much, and lo! it came to little : and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. He shall blow upon them, and they shall wither
3. I have now spoken concerning the density of human ignorance, showing how we do not know what matter is, or what force is, or what the true cause of anything is, how we live and move and have our being is an inscrutable mystery: and I have shown how misleading many of our current expressions are in regard to nature, diverting our attention from the fact that nature is most yielding and plastic, and the laws of nature most pliable and serviceable to mind and will. Admitting that we have not yet fully resolved the difficulty with which we are confronted, yet we feel as if it were already less formidable, and were indeed slowly dissolving. We do not feel that Christ's voice makes so very extravagant a demand upon our reason after all, and are less afraid to advance to closer quarters.
We have already said that the difficulty about Providence and Prayer when reduced to a precise statement is just this—that if God hears prayer He must be perpetually working miracles; but inasmuch as God does not work miracles, we may rest certain that He does not hear prayer. If we ask, How do you know for certain that there is no other way of hearing prayer but by working miracles? we commonly get no answer but one which seems to beg the question. If we ask, How do you know that God never works miracles still? we are probably met by a stare of bewilderment which means How can any man imagine such a thing? If we press home our assurance that even if obliged to suppose that God still works miracles we should in no way be appalled, we shall probably be told that the working of miracles supposes violations, disturbances, and contradictions of the order of nature, and that as none such occur, no miracles are ever wrought. Into such confusion has the idea of a miracle fallen!
Certainly a miracle has frequently been defined as an inversion or suspension of the laws of nature, and such a definition has naturally enough suggested the
We have no wish, however, absolutely to identify a miracle and an answer to prayer, and we assent, although not without qualification, to the statement sometimes made that God hears our prayer but does not work miracles. We call an event miraculous when we see and note the point at which the supernatural force enters. Thus the stilling of the storm was not in itself miraculous, for storms frequently abate suddenly: but we call it a miracle because we here see a common event linked with a supernatural cause—a spiritual force emanating from a will. Conversely, we call an event miraculous which simply transcends all known phenomena : for example, the darkening of the sun at noon, without an eclipse, although we do not see the point at which the supernatural force entered. Or again—we have the highest class of miracles when we see a supernatural event
It will make our meaning clearer to take an example or suppose a case. Let us take the case of the son of the nobleman of Capernaum. He is lying ill of fever: life is ebbing away: his pulse beats slowly and fitfully. The physician is standing over him. He fears 'the patient is dying. He may recover—he may die. An hour or two will decide. Meanwhile, at a distant place, the word was gone from the lips of Christ,' Thy son liveth!' He has launched a force from His will which rushes straight to the seat of life in the young man's body. The physician knows nothing of all that: it is as much unknown to him as what God is doing in heaven is unknown to us. He is standing watching as life trembles in the balance. He perceives some more hopeful symptoms. There is a quickening of the
We are now, relatively to what transpires in Providence, exactly in the position of that physician. How do we know to what extent what transpires may have a miraculous background, that is, be a result of the immediate will of God veiled by the very way in which it links itself to nature's course? Is that possible? Is it hard of belief? I find it, of all things, the easiest to believe it.
In the previous lecture we have shown that there is a possible way in which God may interpose in the course of nature in order to produce results corresponding to our petitions, or may move the forces of nature to definite foreseen issues, all without violations or disturbances; and so have shown that the doctrine of providence and Prayer is not incredible, and have taken the edge from the argument against it from the invariability of nature. Nothing more can reasonably be demanded from us than just to indicate a possible and conceivable mode of answering prayer. It is not required to show how God actually answers prayer, but only how He may answer it: and probably the actual mode can never be known by us, but only surmised. If one were to assert that a certain action must have been done by a certain man called A, it would not be necessary, in order to neutralize the assertion, that I should declare who did it: it would be enough to show that it might equally well have been done by B, or C, or D. Or, if one were to assert that a certain thing could only happen under one set of circumstances, it would not be necessary to show it happening under other conditions, it would
It is possible that in the act of fervent prayer a veritable force, as real as the force of magnetism, goes forth from the spirit of the suppliant, which links itself to the course of nature, and enters as a factor in among the forces which bring results to pass. We do not know what fiery energy may pass from God into the soul when it touches Him in true prayer. We do not know what wondrous forces are hidden in the spirit of man—energies which prayer may unlock. We do not know by what wondrous links the world of spirits may be interlocked: nor do we know to what extent mind may be connected with matter and nature, and exercise power over it. Some branches of Science seem to be feeling their way to some great facts and truths in this direction. Why did Christ demand Faith in the soul before ever He could send His healing virtue through the body? Had the divine power to stream through the soul and pass from it to the material frame? It cannot be deemed absurd or incredible that communion with God may unlock a hidden power, or that in fervent prayer a real energy passes out from the suppliant's spirit. This is at least a possible explanation. Real prayer does go out of a man like subtle fire.
Or again : it is a possible supposition that the course of nature has been pre-arranged so as to run parallel with the moral and spiritual world: that what transpires in nature has been fore-ordained, so as to dove
passim.—May it not be so through all the previous stages and events, both great and small? It is possible that the flood happened in nature's course, pre-arranged to transpire at a certain moral condition of the world. It is possible that the pestilential wind which slew the army of Sennacherib happened in nature's course, prearranged to transpire when Hezekiah prayed. It is possible that the storm which shattered the Spanish Armada happened in nature's course, fore-ordained to issue forth as a providential rescue of the world from the moral and intellectual thraldom of the Papacy. The wonderful parallel between the course of nature and the moral history of the world has often forced itself upon the observation of historians : and if so, it is no superstition at once to recognize the divine and the natural in what transpires,—no superstition at once to view a pestilence as a divine judgment, and as caused by certain physical antecedents. We have here, then, another theory : one certainly, which cannot be proved, but which also cannot be disproved, and must be allowed to be at once possible and conceivable.
To such suppositions, however, or to any others which I have seen, I prefer the one which I have previously indicated—namely, that the Creator sends out, from His living Will, a force which enters, at a point
invisible to us, the chain of cause and effect, so as to produce results which are at once providential and natural, which are answers to prayer and yet meet us as only the outcome of the order of nature. We have seen how vividly the recorded miracles of Christ enable us to represent such a mode of action on the part of the Creator, for we see a force issuing from Christ's living Will and entering into nature to produce new effects, but without violations or disturbances. But this supposition finds points of support and analogy in the whole Scriptural representation of the mode of God's interference in the life-experience of the individual and the moral history of the race.
We are taught to believe in a divine Inspiration and supernatural enlightenment of the human mind, reaching its ideal point in the Light kindled in the minds of Prophets and Apostles. Yet inspired men thought, reasoned, felt, and spake after the manner of man, and each one after his own way : it was as if their intuitions of moral and religious truth sprang up from within rather than came down from above. They could never draw any sharp line of demarcation between what their own labouring minds produced and what the Holy Ghost conveyed, any more than one of the five thousand fed by Christ in the wilderness could separate between the original bread and the supernatural addition in the portion which he ate. We believe that that there is still a direct immediate teaching of the Holy Ghost, an illumination from above, a suggestion of thought and a purifying of the vision by God: but certainly no one can ever with mathematical precision separate what is God's from what he owes to his own reading and thinking, or the teaching of man. In the work of illumination God seems to enter the mind at a point which is to us invisible, and to link on His activity to the laws and faculties of reason, to produce a new result, without violation or disturbance.
We are taught to believe in a supernatural moral renewal of the human soul: that the Holy Ghost breathes out a moral force, which, entering into our minds, thrills them with a new consciousness, becomes wisdom, peace, love, health, purity, which makes us love what we despised, and makes easy what was difficult. But we know that the action of the Holy Ghost links itself so sweetly with all our actions—so coalesces with our own thinking, reading, praying, and striving—that no one can ever with certainty indicate the point or the moment at which the divine beam mingled its rays with the light of reason, or the divine force united itself to our moral powers. Certainly, the laws of our minds are never violated by the Spirit of God, but, on the contrary, confirmed. He works a miracle in us, and yet in most noiseless manner, and entering us we know not how.
We find, further, that the Scripture language, in re-presenting the divine action and interference, is so framed as ever to convey the idea of an interposition, in a way unknown and at a point invisible, in the course of nature, in the world of human volition, and in the heart and life of man. Thus: "Evil shall come upon thee and thou shalt not know whence it riseth,"—it shall enter at a point beyond your vision. "I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from beneath." "His roots shall be dried up beneath." Above and beneath : at a point higher than you can see, at a point deeper than you can reach to, my curse shall enter: and ye shall see its effect. "I will be unto Ephraim as a moth,"—the divine action wondrously hidden in the very folds of a nation's life, eating away its glory and giving no sign. "I will be as the dew unto Israel,"—silently dropping blessing, distilling it, as out of the atmosphere, in a way no man can trace. "I will come on thee as a thief, and thou
We can now better understand why we do not, and may not, pray to God for things unnatural and preternatural. I am not anxious to affirm that we may not pray to God to work miracles on our behalf; for indeed we do pray for miracles, if we mean thereby results to be effected by an immediate interposition of the divine power; we pray for a miracle, more stupendous than any physical miracle, when we pray for the renewal of a human soul, we pray for a grander putting forth of the arm of God when we pray for the Holy Spirit than when we pray for rain and dew. At the same time, we do not pray for the unnatural or preternatural—for visible and tangible divine inter-positions—for the production of any effects which are out of harmony with nature's course, or would startle by their very aspect. We pray that a sick man may be cured, but we do not pray that God would raise a man from the dead; we pray for a bountiful harvest, but not that God would convert stones into bread; we pray for the former and latter rain, but not that God would roll back the current of a river. Why not? Partly because we know that such wonderful signs are reserved for special times and uses, for great turning-points in the history of the kingdom of God and to accredit special messages, and that if they were common they would not only lose all special use, but be in all respects hurtful to the world. Partly, because the express promises given us in the Scriptures
We can now better understand why we do not expect God providentially to interfere for our help, and answer our petitions, without the use of means on our part. It is written, We are fellow-workers with God. And again: We are made partakers of the divine nature. And again : God made man in His own image. Man is appointed to become Lord and King of the realm of nature (Psalm viii.). He is to grasp and master it by knowledge, by penetrating to its secrets to yoke it to his will, by comprehending its proper-ties to mould it by his hand, by bowing under its laws to command it to perform his behests. His rational will is to make him King of Nature: the reflection of the divine sovereignty. God himself will not violate nature: He treats his own arrangements with awe and reverence. Are not the laws of nature as much the expression of the Divine Will as the Decalogue? What shall we then think of ourselves if we expect results without using the means, or count on results while treating God's manifest will with scorn? Shall we not work with God and as God works? When a man wantonly ignores the constitution of nature, and trusts that God will interfere to avert the consequences of his misconduct, he becomes presumptuous: God may interfere, doubtless does interfere, many times, wholly or partially to avert the consequences of our
Again: We can now understand why it is that providential interpositions and answers to prayer always meet us wearing a quite natural aspect: how nothing ever transpires in providence or as answer to prayer which might not have happened in the course of nature, and which will not look as if it had so happened. Some men seem to be hindered believing in a Divine Providence, and the hearing of prayer, by
We have been endeavoring to grapple with a formidable difficulty—for a difficulty we have owned it to be. Need it astonish us to have met with one here? Supposing some elements of difficulty to remain yet unresolved, shall we be astonished? We have only found obscurity where we might beforehand have expected it: for how should we be able to see through the relationship in which the Infinite Mind stands to His creation and the free volitions of His creatures? Supposing we were to admit some outstanding obscurities, shall we therefore turn for mental relief to the affirmation that prayer is futile and trust in Providence a superstition? Are there no difficulties there? I find many. It is very hard to believe that the Creator has put His own works out of His universal control, has left man as a helpless orphan to be the sport of blind remorseless laws,—that there is a Creator at all, and that Creator not as a father in His house. It is very hard to understand how there is a deeply-implanted instinct of prayer in the human soul—how whenever the human soul is powerfully thrilled by
To sum up the matter. We believe that the whole physical creation, and the whole hidden world of mind, are in such a manner filled with the Eternal Spirit that His hand can at any moment touch their most hidden springs, and sweep all their chords as the hand of a musician sweeps the chords of a harp. We believe that it has pleased Him so to condescend to us, that our humble fervent prayer prevails with Him to accomplish both in nature and in the soul what else had not transpired, and that when the hidden secrets of the world's tragic course are revealed, it will be found that prayer has accomplished ten thousand wonders, and been the mightiest factor in determining what has transpired. We are not alarmed nor caused to stagger by the vastness and sublimity of the belief: and are sure that it is capable of progressive verification in the life experience of every man who will put it to the test, and not weary in supplication. We are not daunted by anything which Science advances: but feel that many of its discoveries seem rather to help us to a sublimer grasp of our old faith, and we anticipate
I have now said the best which it lies in my power to say in vindication of the Christian doctrine of Providence and Prayer. I sincerely hope I may have said what may help to clear up some difficulties or chase away the murky night of gathering doubt, or confirm your belief and make it strong against assaults. The subject is most vital, central, and crucial. There are many doctrinal subjects on which a man may long suspend his judgment and yet lead a pious life, many on which we can well afford to tolerate different conclusions and yet feel ourselves brethren of a common Faith. But nothing is more certain than that the question whether God hears prayer does not belong to the same category. It is manifest that piety cannot tolerate disbelief in a Heavenly Father and the power of Prayer, cannot even exist alongside of doubt and misgiving; and that if what certain men of science are saying be true, religion has received a death-blow, Christ's name must now begin to pale, and his fame be lost among the ever-deepening shadows of the past, and Christianity begin to succumb to doom, and slowly rot away as a time-worn superstition. Piety demands a most firm and profound affirmation to the sentence, 'God is the hearer of prayer.' The entrance of a doubt will strangle it and poison it in its very roots. The disbeliever will find himself, before many days have come and gone, not many steps removed from sheer blank Atheism. There are those who plainly enough see the momentousness of the issue involved in this controversy, whose souls shiver with terror as they feel their souls drifting away from the very centre, with no prospect but that of henceforth wandering over an abyss of doubts into an ever denser darkness. To
Finis.
Coulls and Culling, General and Commercial Printers, Rattray-St., Dunedin.
Conferred in the Several Faculties, and of Prizes and Certificates of Honour Awarded in the Several Classes of the University, During Session
The following Gentlemen were named as entitled to High Commendation and Commendation on account of distinguished merit at the various examinations for the degrees of M.B. and C.M.:—
With Fir.it Class Honours in Classics, and Second Class Honours in Mental Philosophy.
With First Class Honours in Mental Philosophy, and Second Class Honours in Classics.
With First Class Honours in Classics.
With First Class Honours in Mental Philosophy.
With Second Class Honours in Classics.
With Second Class Honours in Mental Philosophy.
In Theology, the Cleland Gold Medal, for the best Essay on the "Idea of Righteousness in the Old and New Testaments."
David Hunter, M.A., Newton-on-Ayr.
In Mental Philosophy, the University Silver Medal, for the best Essay on "The Positive Philosophy."
Ebenezer B. Speirs, Millport.
The Ewing Gold Medal for the best Essay on "The History of Assyria."
John P. Mitchell, B.Sc., Glasgow.
A Coulter Prize of Five Pounds, for the best Lecture on Mark III. 22-30.
Hugh George Watt, B.D., Shotts Manse.
The Rae Wilson Gold Medal, for the best "Comparative View of the Doctrine of Sin as presented in the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, and the Fourth Gospel."
David Hunter, M.A., Newton-on-Ayr.
The Henderson Prize of Twenty Guineas, for the best Essay on "The Adaptation of the Sabbath to Man's Intellectual and Moral Nature."
Islay Ferrier Burns, Glasgow.
The Rector's Prize of Twenty-Five Guineas, for the best Essay on "The Relations between Germany and the Papacy."
John Patrick, M.A., Lochwinnoch.
The Find Later Prize of Forty Pounds, for excelling at the Examinations for the Degree of B.D., in Hebrew and Biblical Criticism.
Hugh George Watt, B.D., Shotts Manse.
The Findlater Prize of Forty Pounds, for excelling at the Examinations for the Degree of B.D., in Divinity and Ecclesiastical History.
John F. MacPherson, B.D., Glasgow College.
I. For General Eminence.
II. For Written Examinations.
Henderson Prizes of £30 and £20, given by John Henderson, Esq., of Carrickarden, for Composition and Delivery of Sermons.
Dowanhill Prizes of £21 and £10, 10s., for Elocution.
I. For General Eminence.
II. For Written Examinations.
Prizes determined by the Votes of the Class.
For Excelling at Written Examinations.
Prize for Summer Reading in Hebrew.
Prizes determined by the Votes of the Class.
For Excelling at Written Examinations.
The following Students also were distinguished in these Examinations:—
Prizes awarded by the Votes of the Class.
Prize for Written Examinations.
Prizes awarded by the Votes of the Class.
Prize for Written Examinations.
I. For Eminence in the Examinations during the Session:—
The designates the Prizemen.
First Class Honours.
Second Class Honours.
II. The Prizes given by the Faculty of Procurators of Glasgow for Eminence in a Special Written Examination in the Subjects of the Course were awarded as follows:—
The following Students were distinguished in this examination:—
I. For Eminence in the ordinary Class Examinations during the Session:—
The designates the Prizemen
II. The Prizes given by the Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow for Eminence in a Written Examination on the Completion of Titles in Feudal Conveyancing, were awarded as follows:—
The following Students distinguished themselves in this Examination:—
(1.) Lectures and Demonstrations.
Medal and Certificates decided by Written Exercises; the names in the Order of Merit; those bracketed together being equal.
Medallist—John Carlyle Johnstone.
(2.) Practical Anatomy.
Medal and Certificates decided by Work in the Rooms.
Medallist—John Carlyle Johnstone.
Medal and Certificates decided by Written Exercises and Oral Examinations; the names in the order of merit; those bracketed together being equal.
(2.) Practical Anatomy.
Medal and Certificates decided by Work in the Rooms. Medallist—Alexander Stewart (primus).
Prize for the best Observations on the Action of Remedies.
Certificates of Merit (arranged alphabetically).
For the best Report of Dr. M 'Call Anderson's Clinical Lectures. A Prize of £3 each to
For the best Report of Dr. Gairdner's Clinical Lectures. Prize of Books to
Ordinary Class Prizes for Written Examinations.
Ordinary Class Prizes; Voted by the Class.
Class Prizes in the Course of Office and Field Work.
Walker Prizes for Written Examinations.
Walker Prizes; Voted by the Class.
The George Harvey Prize.
I. Voted by the Class.
II. Written Examination.
Second Year Student—Robert Moodie, Glasgow.
First Year Students.
Next in order of merit.
I. Voted by the Class.
II. Written Examinations.
Next in order of merit at the Written Examinations.
Section Meeting at 9 A.M.
I. Voted by the Class.
Section Meeting at 12 Noon.
Section Meeting at 1 P.M.
II. Written Examinations of the whole three Sections.
Next in order of Merit.
I. For General Eminence, Voted by the Class.
Students of the First Year.
Students of the Second Year.
II. Higher Mathematical Department of the Natural Philosophy Class.
Thomas Gregory, Anstruther.
III. Prizes for Work done in the Physical Laboratory.
IV. For Notes of Lectures during the Session.
I. Prizes awarded by the Votes of the Students for General Eminence in the Essays and Examinations of the Session.
II. Prizes for Excellence in Written Examinations on the Lectures delivered during the Session.
III. Vacation Exercises.
A. Open to Students of Session
An Examination on Kant's Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason. Ebenezer B. Speirs, Millport.
B. Open to Students of Session
For Excellence in Essays and Written Examinations in the Lectures.
I. For Eminence in the Work of the Class during the Session, as shown in Oral and Written Examinations, Exercises, and Essays.
II.—Work prepared during the Summer Vacation.
A.—Students of
Preparatory Reading in Reid and Whately:—
B.—Students of
I.—Essays.
(1.) The Philosophy of Hume.
George Hunter, Glasgow.
(2.) Reasoning—Deductive and Inductive.
David Wilson, Glasgow.
II.—Reading.
(1.) The Works of Descartes.
(2.) Thomson's Outline of the Laws of Thought.
John Drever, Jamestown.
(3.) The Theætetus of Plato.
Robert Ure, Kilbride.
Essay—Kant's Categories and Ideas of the Reason.
A.—Prose Essay on the Decline of the Drama.
B.—Verses on "Sedan."
M. W. M 'Callum.
A.—For Prize of English Text Society.
B.—Examination on Later and Dramatic Literature.
James Wilson, Glasgow.
Exercises in Greek Prose and Verse Composition.
Wallace M. Lindsay.
Voluntary Examination on Subjects read in the Class.
Exercises in Greek Iambics.
Translation into Greek Prose from Smith's History of Greece.
Examination on Subjects prepared during the Summer.
Portion of Musgrave Wilkins' Greek Exercises.
Examinations on Subjects prepared during the Summer.
The Cowan Gold Medal.
Prizes on the Foundation of the late Professor Muirhead, for Written Examinations in the Lectures delivered, and Boohs read, at 1 p.m. during the Session—viz., the Miles Gloriosus and Trinummus of Piautus, Catullus, and Virgil, Æneid xi.
For Written Examinations in the whole of the Work read in the Class during the Session.
For Latin Prose Composition.
For a Written Examination in Books prepared during the Summer
For Translation of a prescribed passage into Latin Prose.
The Cowan Gold Medal.
James Wilson.
Nous avons l'honneur de vous adresser le rapport concernant les travaux et la décision du jury nommé pour décerner le prix Guinard.
Le docteur Jean-Baptiste Guinard, décédé à Saint-Nicolas le
Par arr≖té royal du
Un arr≖té royal du
Le jury se réunit la première fois le
Il ne nous appartient pas de consigner ici une appréciation critique des inventions et des ouvrages non couronnés; mais nous pouvons dire que quelques-uns
Conférence sur Fépargne, ne compte qu'un petit nombre de pages; mais l'idée qu'il développe est si juste, si féconde pour l'avenir, et là où elle a été appliquée, notamment à Gand, elle a donné des résultats si remarquables qu'il a paru réunir toutes les conditions voulues pour mériter les suffrages du jury. Ce que le généreux fondateur de ce beau prix avait en vue, en effet, ce n'était pas seulement de couronner un traité scientifique, une Œuvre volumineuse ou un mémoire académique, qui ne sont trop souvent accessibles qu'aux classes supérieures, c'était aussi et surtout de récompenser une Œuvre destinée à répandre une idée qui, généralement appliquée, pût améliorer réellement le sort de la classe ouvrière. Or, c'est précisément le résultat que doit avoir l'épargne, si on parvient à la généraliser.
Il est inutile d'insister ici sur les avantages de l'épargne : ils sont reconnus par tout le monde; nul ne
Quand on étudie de près ce qu'on appelle la question sociale, c'est-à-dire les rapports entre les capitalistes et les ouvriers, on est bientÔt convaincu que l'un des meilleurs moyens de faire cesser toute mésintelligence est d'arriver à réunir dans les m≖mes mains le capital et le travail trop souvent séparés et parfois m≖me engagés dans une lutte déplorable.
Il faudrait, pour établir définitivement l'harmonie sociale, que le travailleur devînt propriétaire. En effet, que l'ouvrier des champs ou de l'atelier parvienne à posséder une maison, quelques ares de terre, quelques obligations ou un livret de la caisse d'épargne et aussitÔt il est converti aux idées d'ordre; il devient l'ennemi de tout bouleversement qui lui enlèverait des économies péniblement acquises. Mais comment transformer le travailleur en capitaliste? Il n'y a qu'un moyen, c'est de porter l'ouvrier à l'épargne. Le capital créé par l'ouvrier lui-m≖me est le seul qui sera conservé.
C'est en vain que l'on ferait des avances à l'ouvrier ou qu'on lui donnerait les instruments de travail, comme certains réformateurs le proposent; ces cadeaux, comme les héritages échus à des dépensiers, ne tarderaient pas à ≖tre dissipés. Il faut avant tout communiquer aux ouvriers l'esprit d'ordre, de prévoyance et de bonne administration, qui seul peut conserver et accroître le capital acquis, pr≖té ou donné.
Les sociétés coopératives qui ont réussi sont celles qui ont elles-m≖mes formé leur capital au moyen d'un prélèvement héroïque sur le salaire quotidien; celles à qui le gouvernement de
On le voit, porter l'ouvrier à l'épargne est une nécessité de la société moderne, et nulle part elle n'est plus urgente qu'en Belgique, car nulle part l'habitude de l'épargne n'est moins répandue parmi les classes
Sur 1,000 habitants les caisses d'épargne comptent:
200 déposants dans l'état de Massachusetts (Amérique);
La caisse générale d'épargne et de retraite de l'état ne comptait en Belgique que 44,182 livrets au
Comment répandre l'habitude de l'épargne? L'écrit que nous couronnons montre admirablement—et c'est là son grand mérite—que c'est surtout par l'école qu'on y parviendra. Il est difficile d'amener les ouvriers adultes à l'épargne; les chefs d'industrie font de vains efforts pour y parvenir. L'ouvrier qui ignore la puissance libératrice de l'épargne répond : A quoi bon? Cela ne changera pas mon sort; mieux vaut s'amuser aujourd'hui, qui sait ce qui arrivera demain? A chaque jour sa peine. "Ce n'est pas seulement une question de plus ou moins d'intelligence, dit très-bien notre auteur; il y a chez les ouvriers des habitudes invétérées de dépense : pour les hommes, c'est le cabaret; pour les femmes, c'est la toilette. Vainement leur dit-on qu'une maladie, qu'une crise industrielle peut
S'il est difficile d'inculquer l'esprit d'économie aux adultes, il ne reste qu'un moyen de le répandre, c'est de s'adresser aux enfants qui fréquentent l'école primaire. L'instituteur a ici une double mission à remplir, il doit d'abord montrer à l'enfant qu'épargner est une vertu, et que c'est l'unique moyen d'améliorer son sort; il doit ensuite s'efforcer de faire prendre à l'enfant l'habitude de l'épargne. On connaît la puissance de l'habitude; elle devient une seconde nature, a-t-on dit, et rien n'est plus vrai. Celui qui, dans son jeune âge, a fait des économies sera probablement plus tard économe, laborieux et rangé. C'est parce que nos familles d'ouvriers ne savent pas ce que c'est qu'épargner, c'est parce que les enfants ne voient jamais cet exemple sous leurs yeux, que le progrès est si lent sous ce rapport. A Gand, où les deux tiers des enfants des écoles com-munales ont déjà des livrets, on leur explique le mécanisme et les avantages de la Caisse d'épargne. Chaque remboursement demandé à l'école est l'occasion d'une leçon pratique. D'ordinaire ces remboursements servent à acheter des v≖tements aux enfants m≖mes qui épargnent ou à leurs frères et sŒurs. A ce propos, on explique qu'il vaut mieux consacrer l'argent dont on dispose à se bien
Mais, a-t-on dit, c'est dessécher le cŒur des enfants, étouffer tout instinct généreux, enseigner l'avarice.—Ces objections sont réfutées par les faits.—Épargner, c'est vaincre un appétit et résister à un besoin de jouissance immédiate, en vue d'un avantage éloigné que l'esprit seul perçoit. C'est donc un triomphe sur la passion, sur l'égoïsme; or, celui qui est habitué à vaincre ses passions et ses sens, qui vit par l'esprit, est plus disposé à faire un sacrifice pour les autres que celui qui ne cherche que la satisfaction immédiate de ses fantaisies. L'homme sensuel est toujours égoïste; en effet, il se rapproche de la brute, dont l'égoïsme est inconscient, féroce et sans bornes.
Si épargner est une bonne habitude, enseignez-la donc aux enfants.
On objecte encore qu'introduire l'épargne dans l'école ne servira à rien, car les enfants en seront à peine sortis, qu'ils retourneront à cette imprévoyance ordinaire dont ils voient les exemples autour d'eux. Sans doute, beaucoup agiront ainsi, surtout au début; mais un certain nombre persévérera et continuera à épargner. Pour le nier, il faut soutenir que l'éducation et l'habitude n'exercent aucune influence, et qui oserait le pré-
Les résultats obtenus à Gand prouvent que l'Œuvre de l'épargne dans l'école n'est pas une utopie, mais une idée juste et féconde qui est appelée à un succès durable.
L'épargne a été introduite à Gand dans deux écoles communales vers la fin du mois
Afin d'initier les instituteurs et les institutrices au fonctionnement de la Caisse d'épargne, l'auteur a organisé des conférences pour le personnel enseignant, et l'un des instituteurs qui, d'après ses conseils, avait fait une étude spéciale de la loi de
L'une des principales difficultés qu'on a rencontrées au début était la résistance des parents. Les uns
Voici comment l'épargne fonctionne à Gand :
L'instituteur de chaque classe tient un registre composé d'autant de feuillets qu'il y a d'élèves. Chaque feuillet est divisé en plusieurs colonnes destinées à contenir, pendant toute une année, l'inscription et la date du dépÔt et du montant de la somme épargnée par l'élève. Les élèves des classes préparatoires et inférieures reçoivent, en retour des épargnes qu'ils apportent à l'école, un feuillet identique à celui de l'instituteur et sur lequel ce dernier inscrit le montant de la somme versée. Les élèves des classes supérieures et moyennes sont tenus de remplir eux-m≖mes leur feuillet.
L'instituteur en chef possède également un registre contenant les noms de tous les élèves de l'école. Il reçoit hebdomadairement, le lundi, par exemple, tout l'argent épargné et en inscrit le montant dans son cahier.
Dès que les épargnes d'un enfant ont atteint I franc, l'instituteur en chef le dépose à la banque contre échange d'un livret. Ce livret, remis à l'enfant afin qu'il le montre à ses parents, est apporté à l'école pour y ≖tre conservé par l'instituteur en chef. Lorsque les épargnes se sont élevées de nouveau à I franc, il est procédé de la m≖me manière à un nouveau versement, qui est inscrit,
Les livrets ne sont rendus qu'aux parents des élèves et ils sont tenus de venir les prendre eux-m≖mes chez l'instituteur en chef. Si, pour des motifs plausibles, les parents se trouvent dans l'impossibilité de se rendre à l'école, l'instituteur en chef ne délivre le livret que contre un reçu de ceux-ci. Cette mesure offre une ga-rantie sérieuse, en ce sens qu'elle emp≖che les enfants de retirer leurs épargnes à l' insu des parents.
Quelques chiffres donneront une idée précise des résultats obtenus à Gand par la courageuse initiative de notre auteur et par son zèle infatigable.
Au
Les nombres du tableau ci-joint et les tracés qu'ils représentent indiquent de la manière la plus simple la progression de l'épargne dans les écoles de Gand; ils ont été recueillis par un membre du jury, M. Donny.
Diverses publications dues à notre auteur ont engagé d'autres localités à introduire également l'épargne dans l'école.
Voici deux chiffres qui montrent l'influence vraiment remarquable exercée par l'épargne dans l'école. Au
Le succès le plus soutenu est donc venu couronner l'une des meilleures oeuvres que l'on puisse concevoir. Ce fait, trop peu connu, mérite de fixer l'attention de tout homme qui désire l'amélioration des classes inférieures. Le prix Guinard, en faisant mieux connaître cette Œuvre, contribuera certainement à atteindre le but que son fondateur avait en vue. C'est une heureuse coïncidence que ce prix soit attribué à la ville m≖me où l'idée de le créer est née.
On objectera peut-≖tre que le succès est momentané et exceptionnel, qu'il est dû tout entier aux efforts du philanthrope qui a usé de sa légitime influence sur les instituteurs pour leur inspirer un dévouement rare, sur lequel on ne pourra compter ailleurs. Que cette influence toute personnelle cesse d'agir, et l'influence disparaîtra bientÔt! Certes, on ne peut nier que le succès de l'Œuvre est dû en grande partie à l'auteur de l'écrit auquel nous avons décerné le prix; mais si l'idée sur laquelle elle repose est juste, elle se perpétuera et se généralisera, parce qu'il se trouvera ailleurs des hommes dévoués à la classe laborieuse qui comprendront la nécessité de répandre le goût de l'épargne. Déjà dans d'autres villes, l'Œuvre de Gand a été imitée et une société se forme en ce moment m≖me à Bruxelles pour en favoriser l'extension dans la capitale. Il en est ainsi pour toutes les Œuvres philanthropiques. Sans doute, c'est à M. Schulze-Delitsch que l'Allemagne doit ses banques populaires, mais le principe qui leur a servi de base étant juste, il s'en fonde partout et leur nombre s'accroît sans cesse.
A l'appui de sa décision, le jury peut invoquer le témoignage de l'autorité la plus compétente en cette matière, M. Léon Cans, directeur général de la Caisse d'épargne de l'état, dont l'un des derniers rapports officiels contient un passage qui concerne l'épargne dans l'école et l'écrit destiné à en démontrer les avantages
"Déjà l'année dernière, dit-il, j'ai rendu compte des excellentes mesures adoptées par l'administration communale et la commission des écoles de la ville de Gand : faire connaître aux élèves des écoles primaires et des écoles d'adultes l'existence et l'utilité de la Caisse d'épargne, mettre à leur portée les moyens d'y effectuer leurs dépÔts, telle était la combinaison simple et facile, à la réalisation de laquelle les instituteurs et les institutrices de la ville de Gand se sont pr≖tés avec un zèle des plus louables. Dès les premiers jours, le résultat dépassa leur propre attente; non-seulement le sentiment de l'économie se développait et se propageait parmi les enfants, mais il était permis d'espérer qu'il s'étendrait à leur famille. Cet espoir commence à se réaliser.
"Dans une publication inspirée par les idées les plus généreuses et par une grande élévation de sentiments, un membre du conseil communal et de la commission des écoles a exposé en quelques pages les raisons qui démontrent la nécessité de l'adoption du système préconisé, puis il cite les faits réalisés qui ne permettent pas de douter du succès.
"Publié en français et en flamand, sous forme de brochure, cet opuscule a été adressé, par les soins de
"Le conseil, j'en ai la conviction, voudra bien se joindre à moi pour donner un témoignage de gratitude à l'auteur anonyme de-cette brochure et pour le remercier de ses efforts en faveur de la propagation de l'épargne. C'est véritablement à lui que revient l'honneur d'une innovation qui est de nature à transformer nos populations ouvrières. Cette innovation ne devait, du reste, pas tarder à trouver un grand nombre d'adhérents parmi les administrations communales, ainsi que parmi les instituteurs et les inspecteurs de l'enseignement primaire. Plusieurs villes, notamment Bruxelles, et quelques communes rurales ont mis le système en pratique avant la fin de l'année, et déjà l'on peut con-stater un accroissement considérable du nombre des livrets et des petits versements. Mais le compte à rendre des résultats de ce mouvement, qui n'est qu'à son début, appartient à l'année courante. Je le consigne ici comme un appel aux administrations communales et aux instituteurs qui hésiteraient encore à introduire la caisse d'épargne dans leurs écoles.
"L'administration de la Caisse générale d'épargne sera heureuse de pouvoir rendre hommage au zèle et, au dévouement dont ils feront preuve pour assurer l'organisation de l'épargne clans ces institutions, et elle se montrera toujours disposée à publier les résultats annuels de leur gestion.
"D'autres moyens ont d'ailleurs été mis en Œuvre pour faire naître et encourager la pratique de l'épargne parmi les élèves des écoles.
"A Gand, les membres du conseil communal, des fabricants et d'autres personnes ont donné leur concours pécuniaire, et des sociétés flamandes ont affecté à "encouragement de l'épargne le produit de représentations théâtrales.
"Le conseil communal de Bruges a résolu d'inscrire au budget, à titre de subside, une somme de 1,000 fr. pour aider à l'introduction de la caisse d'épargne dans les écoles.
"Le comité pour l'encouragement de l'instruction des enfants pauvres dans les écoles communales de Courtrai a décidé d'attribuer aux bonnes notes que les élèves pourront obtenir une valeur én espèces pour former ou accroître leur petit capital d'épargne.
"M. le bourgmestre de Stavelot, président de la succursale de la caisse érigée dans cette ville par son initiative, a souscrit pour une somme de 300 francs par an, et une autre personne de la m≖me ville pour 100 francs, afin d'encourager ou de récompenser l'habitude de l'épargne parmi les élèves des écoles par un versement sur leur livret."
A ce témoignage très-significatif que nous sommes heureux de pouvoir invoquer à l'appui de notre décision, nous pourrions joindre celui de plusieurs hommes d'état et de directeurs d'écoles normales qui ont fait également l'accueil le plus favorable à l'écrit sur
En résumé, faire en sorte que l'ouvrier arrive à la possession du capital par l'épargne, et pour atteindre ce but la recommander et l'introduire dans l'école primaire, telle est l'idée qu'a exposée notre auteur, en s' appuyant sur le remarquable succès obtenu dans les écoles communales de Gand pendant la dernière période quinquennale, et cette idée a paru si importante, si juste et surtout si conforme au but du prix Guinard, que le jury, à l'unanimité M. Thonissen avait envoyé sa démission avant la décision du jury.
Veuillez agréer, M. le ministre, l'expression de notre profond respect.
Pourquoi viens-je vous parler de l'épargne, à vous qui ≖tes appelés à devenir instituteurs et institutrices? C'est que votre future mission est de présider non-seulement à l'instruction, mais aussi à l'éducation de la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre. Il faut nous arr≖ter un instant à cette mission; il n'y en a pas de plus grande, de plus belle. Vous ≖tes les artisans de la civilisation et du progrès. Car qu'est-ce que la civilisation? qu'est-ce que le progrès? On dit qu'une nation est civilisée quand elle cultive les facultés intellectuelles et morales dont Dieu a doué toutes ses créatures. Et le progrès consiste dans ce m≖me développement : l'instruction doit se répandre dans toutes les classes de la société et se perfectionner de jour en jour, et l'éducation doit toujours accompagner l'instruction; il
Vous me direz, mes amis, que j'ai oublié un élément de la civilisation et du progrès, le développement de la richesse, ce que l'on appelle le progrès matériel. Ce n'est pas un oubli. La richesse joue un grand rÔle dans les progrès de la civilisation, toutefois il y faut voir, non un but, mais un moyen, un instrument. Les pays les plus riches sont aussi les pays les plus civilisés, et les plus pauvres sont les plus incultes. C'est qu'il faut une certaine richesse pour créer et multiplier les établissements d'instruction publique et toutes les institutions qui s'y rattachent, telles que les bibliothèques et les musées de tout genre. Or, les écoles sont les ateliers dans lesquels les facultés humaines sont développées; sans les écoles, il y a ni instruction ni éducation. Voilà pourquoi le progrès intellectuel et moral ne peut ≖tre séparé du progrès matériel. Mais gardez-vous de les mettre sur la m≖me ligne : ce serait confondre le but avec le moyen. L'homme n'a pas pour mission de s'enrichir, il a pour mission de développer sa raison et sa conscience. L'instruction et la moralité, voilà le but que nous devons poursuivre de tous nos efforts; mais ces efforts ne deviennent possibles que lorsque la société a une certaine richesse, et la société n'est riche que lorsque les individus possèdent. Ainsi le progrès matériel est l'instrument, tandis que le progrès intellectuel et moral est le but. Réfléchissez un instant au terme de
Maintenant vous comprendrez, mes amis, ce qu'il y a de grand et de beau dans votre mission, et pourquoi je viens vous parler de l'épargne. Qui dirige l'instruction et l'éducation de l'enfance? L'instituteur. C'est donc vous qui jetez les premiers fondements de la civilisation, c'est vous qui ≖tes les artisans du progrès. Ce n'est pas assez dire. L'immense majorité des hommes ne reçoivent d'autre enseignement que celui que l'on appelle primaire. Vous ≖tes donc les seuls maîtres de ces classes qui sont tout ensemble les plus nombreuses et les plus pauvres. Il en résulte que l'avenir de la société est dans vos mains. Pendant longtemps les classes ouvrières étaient pour ainsi dire en dehors de la société. Dans l'antiquité, certaines catégories d'ouvriers, ceux surtout qui cultivaient la terre, étaient esclaves; dans les longs siècles du moyen âge, les esclaves sont devenus des serfs et les serfs ont fini par ≖tre affranchis. Enfin la révolution de 89 a déclaré tous les hommes égaux, et les a tous appelés à la liberté politique. Depuis lors, il se fait un immense mouvement dans la société. Nos constitutions proclament la souveraineté du peuple; le peuple veut ≖tre souverain en réalité. C'est une révolution radicale qui se prépare. Cette révolution peut ≖tre funeste, elle peut ≖tre bienfaisante. Elle sera funeste si la classe ouvrière reste ignorante et inculte, comme elle l'est malheureusement encore presque partout; car, dans leur ignorance et leur
Cela ne suffit pas, dit-on; il faut aussi que la condition matérielle de l'ouvrier s'améliore, sinon il n'aura pas m≖me les moyens de cultiver sa raison et son âme. Je suis d'accord; aussi je n'entends pas condamner les efforts que font les ouvriers pour rendre leur condition meilleure. Que dis-je? je leur offre un moyen sûr d'acquérir cette aisance qui est nécessaire à l'homme pour qu'il puisse travailler à son développement intellectuel et moral. Mais, au lieu de demander avec les socialistes que la propriété soit abolie, je dis aux ouvriers : "Il dépend de vous de devenir proprié
Vous voyez, mes amis, quelle grande mission vous avez dans la révolution qui se prépare. Vous n'≖tes pas seulement les artisans du progrès intellectuel et moral; vous ≖tes encore appelés à transformer les classes ouvrières, en apprenant à l'enfant de l'ouvrier que son sort dépend de lui, qu'il peut conquérir cet instrument de développement intellectuel et moral qu'il envie tant, l'aisance, la richesse m≖me, en pratiquant l'épargne que vous lui enseignez dès l'école gardienne, et que vous continuez à lui pr≖cher à l'école communale et à l'école d'adultes. Vous avez participé à l'épargne, comme élèves de nos écoles, depuis votre tendre enfance. Vous voilà adolescents, bientÔt vous serez instituteurs et institutrices. C'est le moment de vous dire pourquoi nous avons introduit l'épargne à l'école, et de vous convier à nous pr≖ter votre concours le plus actif dans cette grande oeuvre.
Quand je demande aux enfants de nos écoles ce que c'est qu'épargner et pourquoi ils épargnent, ils sont très-embarrassés pour répondre. Les uns disent : C'est mettre de l'argent de cÔté au lieu de le dépenser. Les autres ajoutent : C'est afin d'avoir une pomme pour la soif. Il y a du vrai dans ces réponses, mais ce n'est pas toute la vérité. L'avare aussi met son argent de cÔté au lieu de le dépenser; ce-
Il suffit d'un peu de réflexion, mes amis, pour ne pas confondre l'avarice et l'économie. Pourquoi l'avare entasse-t-il son argent, au point de se priver du nécessaire? Il entasse pour entasser; pour lui la richesse est le but de toute sa vie, et il ne songe pas m≖me à jouir de ses trésors. L'avarice est une mauvaise passion, une maladie de lame, presque une folie. Est-ce que pour nous qui pr≖chons l'épargne, la richesse est aussi un but? J'ai commencé par vous dire que la richesse n'est jamais qu'un moyen, un instrument de développement intellectuel et moral. Celui qui épargne entend faire usage du capital qu'il forme par ses économies; et il compte en faire un bon usage, puisqu'il sait que le but de la vie n'est pas d'≖tre riche ni de jouir de ses richesses, mais que le but est de nous perfectionner sans cesse. Il est donc absurde de nous faire le reproche d'enseigner l'avarice aux enfants. Il y a m≖me quelque chose d'odieux dans ce reproche; car c'est nous accuser de pr≖cher le vice, de pr≖cher une maladie de l'âme, de pr≖cher la folie.
Personne ne niera que l'économie soit une vertu. Elle ne consiste pas à ne faire aucune dépense, elle consiste à ne pas faire de dépense inutile. Il y a des dépenses nécessaires; nous devons dépenser pour vivre, et l'homme ne vit pas seulement de pain; son intelligence et son âme ont
L'épargne, mes amis, n'a pas d'autre objet. Quand les enfants disent que l'on épargne afin d'avoir une pomme pour la soif, ils ont raison; seulement il faut entendre le proverbe dans sa plus large acception. L'épargne accumulée jour par jour forme un capital; les capitaux sont ce que nous appelons richesse; ils sont donc un instrument de développement intellectuel et moral : voilà la légitimité de l'épargne. Je vais vous donner un exemple, mes amis, en le prenant dans votre sphère d'idées et de sentiments. Plusieurs d'entre vous ont déjà épargné dans nos écoles communales pour s'acheter un Dictionnaire, ou pour s'abonner aux Œuvres de Conscience. J'ai applaudi à cette économie, et je voudrais la voir généralisée dans nos écoles normales. Tous, vous avez besoin de livres, car les bons livres sont la nourriture de l'intelligence et de l'âme, ils développent la raison et ils vous inspirent de bons sentiments, qui sont le mobile des bonnes actions. A vous surtout, futurs instituteurs et institutrices, il faut une bibliothèque de livres choisis; car vous devez avoir beaucoup de connaissances pour bien remplir vos fonctions : c'est un mauvais maître que celui qui n'en sait pas cent fois plus qu'il n'en enseigne. Donc économisez pour vous former une petite bibliothèque. Ce sera encore une pomme pour la soif, mais pour la soif de la science. Il y en a peut-≖tre parmi vous qui sont absolument dépourvus de moyens; ils diront qu'ils ne peuvent pas économiser sans imposer une nouvelle charge à leurs parents. C'est la ré-
Ce que je viens de vous dire, mes amis, répond à un autre reproche que l'on nous adresse. Il est impossible de nier que l'économie soit une vertu, mais on prétend qu'il ne faut pas la pr≖cher aux enfants, parce que c'est leur enseigner l'égoïsme et vicier leur nature généreuse. Que d'illusions et que d'erreurs il y a dans cette accusation! On croit que les enfants sont généreux, tandis qu'ils sont personnels, disons le mot, égoïstes. Voyez cet enfant : ses parents, quoique fort pauvres, lui donnent deux centimes le dimanche pour ses menus plaisirs; il court s'acheter une friandise quelconque : songe-t-il à en faire part à ses parents? songe-t-il à en faire part à ses camarades? Il se hâte de manger sa pomme, et ne pense pas m≖me que ses parents se sont refusé une pomme pour que lui en ait une. Ce que l'on appelle les menus plaisirs sont un apprentissage d'égoïsme. Dire à l'enfant qu'il doit épargner ces quelques centimes, ce n'est donc pas lui donner une leçon d'égoïsme, c'est au contraire lui apprendre à se priver d'une fantaisie; et s'imposer une privation, n'est-ce pas le commencement du sacrifice, de l'abnégation, du dévouement? Ceci n'est pas de la théorie. L'enfant ne tarde pas à savoir à quoi servent les économies qu'il fait en se privant d'une friandise désirée;
Je vais vous raconter, à ce sujet, une histoire dont j'ai été témoin. En allant visiter une école, je vois à la porte une jeune fille qui sanglotait. C'était une élève de nos écoles d'adultes. Je lui demande la cause de son chagrin; elle me répond qu'elle vient de perdre son père mort subitement, et qu'elle va chercher son livret. Nous avions remarqué que, depuis quelque temps, elle épargnait des sommes assez considérables, et nous avions m≖me conçu quelques soupçons. Elle nous raconta qu'elle devait se marier; c'étaient les économies de son fiancé et les siennes qu'elle apportait le dimanche à l'école. Le petit capital qu'elle avait amassé devait servir à son établissement. Elle en demandait le remboursement pour payer l'enterrement de son père et pour donner du pain à sa mère, à son aïeule, à un frère idiot, à ses sŒurs plus jeunes qu'elle. Quel sa-crifice! Et elle ne songeait pas m≖me que c'en fût un! Elle ne pensait qu'à son père, elle ne parlait que de lui. Pour le moment, elle renonça à se marier parce qu'elle devait travailler pour sa famille. Voilà les fruits de l'épargne : est-ce une leçon d'égoïsme?
Je reviens à l'épargné que l'on pratique dans les écoles de Gand dès la plus tendre enfance; nous avons des livrets dans nos écoles gardiennes. Au Ier juillet 1871
Je vais répondre à cette nouvelle accusation, mes amis; elle me fournira l'occasion de vous donner des conseils que vous serez bientÔt dans le cas de pratiquer. Pourquoi y a-t-il des écoles gardiennes? Elles ne servent pas uniquement à garder les enfants; ce sont des écoles, donc des établissements d'instruction et d'éducation. Y aurait-il par hasard un âge fixe auquel on commence à élever les enfants? L'éducation commence avec la vie et ne finit qu'avec elle. Sans doute elle se proportionne et elle varie avec les forces de l'intelligence. Dans le bas âge, c'est une discipline; on inculque les vertus par l'habitude. Pourquoi n'habituerait-on pas les enfants à l'économie, comme on les habitue à l'obéissance? Faut-il attendre que la raison de l'enfant soit développée pour pour procéder à son éducation? La question implique une absurdité : ce serait attendre pour développer les facultés de l'enfant que ces facultés soient développées! L'éducation est une Œuvre progressive : à chaque âge on dit et on apprend à l'enfant ce qu'il est en état de comprendre et de faire.
Comment enseignons-nous l'épargne dans nos écoles gardiennes et dans les classes inférieures de nos écoles communales? Nous disons aux enfants que c'est mal faire de dépenser son argent à acheter des friandises, qui sont le plus souvent mauvaises et qui par conséquent les rendent malades. Est-ce à dire que nous voulions priver les pauvres petits du plaisir de manger de bons fruits? Dieu nous en garde! Nous conseillons aux mères d'acheter elles-m≖mes des fruits, ou les friandises que leur fortune
A mesure que l'intelligence de l'enfant se développe, on lui explique les avantages de l'économie. Il comprendra bien vite les bienfaits économiques de l'épargne. Chaque remboursement demandé à l'école sera l'occasion d'une leçon pratique. Pendant le premier semestre de Francs 26,936-12.
Quand l'enfant reste à l'école jusqu'à quatorze ans, on peut lui faire comprendre les bienfaits moraux de l'épargne. Ceci est, à mon avis, le point essentiel, c'est aussi le plus difficile. J'appelle toute votre attention, mes amis, sur ce que je vais vous dire. L'homme a des besoins qu'il doit satisfaire; il y a donc des dépenses nécessaires, légitimes. Mais l'homme a aussi des besoins qu'il se crée lui-m≖me, et que pour cette raison on appelle factices, en les opposant aux besoins naturels. Les besoins que la nature nous donne sont limités. Il ne faut qu'une certaine quantité d'aliments pour vivre; si nous la dépassons, nous détruisons la vie au lieu de l'entretenir, car une alimentation excessive engendre des maladies et donne la mort. Il en est de m≖me des autres besoins naturels; il ne vous faut qu'un habit pour vous couvrir, vous n'en mettez pas deux; vous ne pouvez pas habiter deux maisons à la fois. Quant aux besoins de l'intelligence, on les satisfait bien facilement; l'instruction est donnée gratuitement aux pauvres, et les bibliothèques publiques, les bibliothèques populaires, les musées fournissent des moyens gratuits de continuer l'éducation intellectuelle commencée dans nos écoles.
Les besoins factices, au contraire, n'ont pas d'autre limite que les désirs de l'homme, et ces désirs sont infinis. Vous n'avez qu'à jeter les yeux autour de vous pour vous en convaincre. Ou mieux encore, descendez dans votre conscience, scrutez vos goûts, vos habitudes et vous trouverez en vous-m≖mes le germe de ces besoins immodérés que
Il est presque inutile que je parle du goût désordonné de la toilette. Dès que dans vos habits vous dépassez la simplicité qui n'exclut pas le bon goût, vous faites une dépense inutile. Si cette dépense ne nuit pas au corps, et souvent elle lui nuit, par contre elle vicie l'âme et parfois elle lui devient mortelle. La jeune fille qui ne songe qu'à sa parure devient futile; elle oublie que sa mission sur cette terre est d'orner son esprit et son cŒur, et non pas de parer son corps. Le goût du luxe lui fait désirer des habillements qui sont au-dessus de sa condition et de sa fortune. Comment se les procurera-t-elle? Je m'arr≖te... Combien de jeunes filles se sont perdues par amour de la toilette!
Maintenant vous comprendrez l'influence morale de
J'entends l'objection que vous me faites, mes amis. En-
Ne me dites pas : Les riches sont donc bienheureux, puisqu'ils peuvent, eux, satisfaire tous leurs désirs. Non, ils ne le peuvent pas; et, si on ne leur apprend pas à les modérer, ils sont tout aussi malheureux que l'enfant de l'ouvrier qui envie leur prétendu bonheur. C'est que les désirs de l'homme sont infinis, tandis que les moyens de les satisfaire sont nécessairement limités. Vous aurez à élever un jour des enfants gâtés, c'est-à-dire des enfants dont les parents satisfont les moindres désirs. Eh bien, vous vous convain-crez qu'il n'y a pas d'enfants plus malheureux. Ils ne s'amusent plus de rien, parce qu'ils sont blasés sur tout; ils voudraient l'impossible : ils demandent qu'on leur donne la lune et les étoiles, et comme on ne peut pas les leur procurer, ils se fâchent, ils crient, ils trépignent de colère. Ces enfants gâtés sont l'image des hommes qui croient qu'ils trouveront le bonheur en satisfaisant tous leurs désirs : s'ils allaient à la recherche du malheur, ils ne pourraient pas s'y prendre mieux. Et cependant il y en a tant qui pensent ainsi! on peut dire sans exagération que la classe ouvrière est infectée de ce funeste préjugé : pour elle, les riches, qu'elle envie, sont les heureux de ce monde. Non, mes amis, la richesse n'est qu'un moyen, elle peut nous procurer le bonheur, elle peut aussi nous donner le malheur. Pour moi, j'ai toujours rendu grâces à Dieu de m' avoir fait naître pauvre. La pauvreté est une excitation au travail, et le travail est le lot de l'homme, car c'est par le travail qu'il développe ses facultés, et c'est là notre mission. C'est-à-dire que Dieu nous a imposé la loi de devenir de jour en jour plus parfaits; ceux qui obéissent à la voix de Dieu sont heureux, ceux qui ne l' écoutent pas sont malheureux.
L'ouvrier ne peut-il pas remplir sa mission ici-bas, tout en restant ouvrier, tout en étant pauvre? Les écoles lui fournissent le moyen de s'instruire; il y en a pour tous
Je ne ferme pas les oreilles aux justes plaintes des ouvriers. "On nous offre l'instruction, disent-ils, et dès l'âge de dix ans on nous enferme dans un atelier ou dans une fabrique, où nous travaillons du matin au soir, sans avoir un instant de loisir pour nous livrer aux plaisirs de l'intelligence. On nous parle du bonheur de la famille, il n'y a pas de famille pour nous. Enfants, nous voyons à peine notre père et notre mère, ceux-ci étant occupés à un travail sans relâche. Adultes et mariés, nous ne voyons pas notre femme, notre mari, pas plus que nos enfants. Alors
Quand nous avons pr≖ché l'épargne dans nos écoles d'adultes, les ouvriers ne nous comprenaient pas. Nous leur disions que l'épargne est un devoir; ils ne savaient pas ce que cela voulait dire, un devoir. Quand avec beaucoup de peine nous leur expliquions que l'homme a des devoirs à remplir et que l'épargne est un de ces devoirs, ils nous objectaient que l'ouvrier n'a pas les moyens d'épargner, que ce qu'il peut économiser est en tout cas si peu de chose, qu'il ne valait pas la peine de commencer. Ce n'est qu'à force d'insistance que nous sommes parvenus à introduire l'épargne parmi les adultes. Aujourd'hui encore, ce n'est que la minorité des ouvriers fréquentant nos écoles qui ont des livrets; au Ier juillet 1871Ier juillet, 926 livrets. Dans nos écoles communales, le nombre des épargnants est bien plus considérable, mais c'est dans une proportion inverse pour les filles et les garçons : sur 3,741 garçons il y avait, au Ier juillet 1871
Ces chiffres prouvent que nous avons eu raison d'introduire l'épargne dans nos écoles communales. Il est bien plus facile de donner de bonnes habitudes aux enfants que de déraciner de mauvaises passions chez les adultes. Et il
A vous, il est inutile de dire que l'homme a des devoirs à remplir, sur cette terre, envers lui-m≖me et envers ses semblables. Et vous comprendrez très-facilement que l'épargne est un de ces devoirs. Dieu nous a donné comme loi de nous perfectionner : tel est notre premier devoir; de là découlent tous les devoirs que la religion et la morale nous imposent. Il faut avant tout que l'homme vive. Comment se procure -t-il les moyens de subsistance? Par le travail, en prenant le mot dans sa plus large acception, le travail intel-lectuel et le travail matériel. Le travail ne suffit pas; la maladie peut nous emp≖cher de travailler, ainsi que la vieillesse; m≖me dans la force de l'âge, le travail peut manquer à l'ouvrier. De quoi vivra -t-il alors? S'il n'a pas épargné une pomme pour la soif, il devra mendier. Dieu nous a-t-il créés pour mendier? et si tout le monde mendiait, qui donnerait aux mendiants? Non, le travail procure aussi les moyens d'exister, alors que nous ne pouvons pas travailler: c'est l'économie sur ce que nous gagnons en travaillant. Dépenser moins que l'on ne gagne, voilà un moyen assuré de nous garantir de la misère et de nous procurer l'aisance, la richesse m≖me; car c'est ainsi que se sont formés les capitaux, et qu'ils se forment encore sous nos yeux. Le travail étant un devoir, l'épargne est aussi un devoir. Si l'ouvrier le remplit, il en sera récompensé par l'aisance qui régnera dans sa famille.
Il se plaint de n'avoir pas d'intérieur, pas de foyer do-
Ier juillet 1871
Je ne veux pas donner aux ouvriers des espérances chimériques en leur promettant des châteaux en Espagne. La voie de la richesse leur est ouverte;il y a des fabricants qui ont commencé par ≖tre ouvriers, mais tous les ouvriers ne peuvent pas devenir fabricants. Presque tous sont destinés à rester ouvriers. C'est comme ouvriers qu'ils doivent chercher à améliorer leur condition. L'épargne leur en donne le moyen. Je viens de dire que l'ouvrier qui épargne peut devenir propriétaire de la maison qu'il habite. Voilà déjà un immense bienfait. Il aura donc un intérieur à lui, il aura une famille. Aujourd'hui, il n'est que trop vrai que l'ouvrier fuit le domicile conjugal pour se livrer aux funestes plaisirs du cabaret. Ce n'est pas la faute de sa position sociale, c'est lui le coupable. S'il épargnait l'argent qu'il dépense au cabaret, il pourrait se créer un foyer
Vous apprendrez un jour, mes amis, peut-≖tre savez-vous par l'expérience de votre famille, que la plaie des ménages ouvriers, c'est l'achat à crédit, op den plak, comme on dit chez nous. Celui qui achète à crédit achète cher, et de mauvaises marchandises; il paye donc un intér≖t usuraire des avances qu'on lui fait. C'est dire qu'il sera endetté toute sa vie, et par conséquent toujours misérable et malheureux. L'épargne permettra à l'ouvrier d'acheter au comptant, de faire ses provisions, comme font les bourgeois. Avec l'aisance, le contentement et le bonheur régneront dans les familles, où règne maintenant la discorde, la misère et le malheur.
La famille! C'est là que l'ouvrier doit chercher son bonheur, ce n'est pas au cabaret. Le désordre et la dissipation font de la famille un enfer; l'ordre et l'économie en font un ciel. Que l'ouvrier ne dise pas que le long travail auquel il est soumis ne lui laisse pas le loisir nécessaire pour vivre de la vie de famille. Sans doute, son travail est rude; mais ne voit-il pas que son patron est aussi à la fabrique, au comptoir, pendant toute la journée? L'homme d'études est également éloigné des siens. La femme préside au ménage; les enfants sont à l'école; on se voit à midi et le soir. Qu'est-ce qui emp≖che l'ouvrier d'en faire autant? Qu'il quitte le cabaret et il aura les loisirs qu'il se plaint de ne pas avoir. Au sortir de l'atelier, il sera heureux de voir ses
Je crois que personne ne contestera les bienfaits de l'épargne. On a prétendu longtemps que pour l'ouvrier elle est impossible. Oui, pour l'ouvrier adulte et inculte, l'épargne est impossible, mais l'impossibilité gît dans ses mauvaises habitudes; disons-le, dans ses vices. Bien des patrons ont essayé d'introduire l'épargne parmi leurs ouvriers, ils ont échoué. De là les plaintes que l'on entend partout contre les travailleurs : ils sont incorrigibles, dit-on, ils sont ingrats; ils ne comprennent pas m≖me le bien qu'on veut leur faire; il n'y a qu'à les abandonner à leur destinée. L'expérience qui se fait dans nos écoles est une réponse à ces plaintes. Que les fabricants me permettent de le leur dire : ils s'y sont mal pris. L'épargne n'existe, elle n'est bienfaisante que lorsque l'ouvrier la fait par sentiment du devoir. Or, pour que l'homme ait la conscience de son devoir, il faut que son intelligence ait reçu un certain développement : une con-science non éclairée est muette. L'ouvrier inculte ne comprend pas qu'il ait des devoirs à remplir; comment donc épargnerait-il par devoir? Si le malheureux est ingrat, aveugle, c'est à son ignorance qu'il faut s'en prendre. Il faut donc commencer par lui donner l'instruction et l'éducation. Voilà pourquoi on a introduit l'épargne dans les écoles de Gand. Le succès a été complet. Au Ier juillet 1871
Je puis donc assurer, avec pleine confiance, qu'un jour tout enfant de nos écoles aura un livret à la Caisse d'épargne. Et ce qui se fait à Gand peut et doit se faire ailleurs. Déjà l'épargne est introduite à l'école, dans presque toutes nos grandes villes; elle se répand dans les campagnes. C'est le premier pas fait dans la révolution qui est appelée à transformer les classes ouvrières. Il y a encore beaucoup à faire, il y a encore bien des obstacles à surmonter; je vais vous les signaler, car c'est avec votre aide, mes amis, que nous les vaincrons.
Je viens de vous parler de parents qui résistent à nos conseils. Vous trouverez cette résistance partout dans les commencements. La défiance y est pour beaucoup; cela se
Cet intér≖t de 4 p. c. ne satisfait pas encore les déposants. Il en est qui retirent leurs économies dès qu'elles s'élèvent à une somme qui leur permet d'acheter un lot avec primes. On achète pour 100 francs, je suppose, un lot de Gand, qui rapporte un intér≖t de 3 p. c., et l'on a la chance de gager une des primes qui chaque année sont tirées au sort. C'est une véritable loterie que, pour ma part, j'ai toujours désapprouvée; toute loterie est une duperie, c'est un jeu de hasard que nos lois prohibent, parce que ce jeu tourne toujours au profit de celui qui tient le jeu, et au préjudice de ceux qui jouent. Il est vrai que le lot à prime donne un intér≖t de 3 p. c.; mais au lieu d'acheter un lot à prime pour 100 francs, l'on peut acheter un coupon de rente sur l'état qui donne un intér≖t de 4 ou de 4 ½ p. c. On sacrifie donc un intér≖t assuré de I ou I ½ p. c., pour une chance qui est une chimère pour l'immense majorité de ceux qui ont des lots. Voici l'inconvénient de ce jeu : c'est qu'il nourrit l'espérance d'une fortune subite due au hasard. Or, il faut inspirer à l'ouvrier, non pas le désir de faire fortune par un coup de hasard; il faut lui dire, au
Le sujet que je viens de toucher, mes amis, est d'une haute gravité; il faut le méditer, et recommander à toute occasion et à vos élèves et à leurs parents le travail et l'économie qui donnent un revenu assuré; il faut les détourner de toute espèce de jeu de hasard; les espérances que fait naître un gain dû à un coup du sort sont malsaines. Ce n'est pas là, du reste, le plus grand obstacle à l'épargne, car l'achat des lots suppose que l'ouvrier a déjà économisé un petit capital. A l'école m≖me, vous rencontrerez une résistance souvent obstinée, quand c'est une école dite payante qui reçoit les enfants de la bourgeoisie. Sur 1,029 élèves de nos écoles payantes, il n'y a que 455 livrets; donc 574 élèves n'en ont pas. Il y a des parents qui placent eux-m≖mes les économies de leurs enfants : à cela il n'y a rien à dire. Il y a des familles où les enfants ne reçoivent pas ce qu'on appelle des menus plaisirs. A cela encore il n'y a rien à dire. Mais il y a des raisons moins bonnes qui emp≖chent les familles bourgeoises de participer à l'épargne : disons le mot, ce sont des préjugés de vanité. On ne veut pas ≖tre confondu avec les enfants de nos écoles gratuites; ou bien on n'aime pas à apporter quelques centimes chaque semaine, alors que d'autres enfants apportent des sommes plus considérables; ou bien encore on préfère acheter des friandises. La vanité est un défaut, et un grand défaut, on pourrait dire qu'elle est, comme l'oisiveté, la mère des vices. Les parents devraient comprendre cela, et combattre ce défaut
J'arrive au plus grand de tous les obstacles. L'enfant quitte l'école; continuera-t-il à épargner? Ceux qui sont hostiles à l'épargne prétendent que non, et disent que l'épargne à l'école est un mouvement factice et partant illusoire. On a posé aux instituteurs et aux institutrices en chef de Gand la question suivante : "Combien d'élèves y a-t-il qui, ayant quitté l'école, continuent à épargner?" La réponse a été, pour toutes nos écoles, que 668 élèves continuaient à épargner. Quelques chefs d'école ont répondu qu'aucun élève ne continuait à épargner; ils entendent sans doute dire qu'aucun élève ne continue à épargnera l'école, car ils ne peuvent pas savoir si, après avoir quitté l'école, ils continuent à épargner ou non. Toujours est-il constant que l'épargne continue, alors m≖me que les élèves ont quitté l'école, et il est tout aussi certain qu'un grand nombre d'enfants demandent le remboursement de leurs livrets au sortir de l'école. Pour mieux dire, ce sont les parents qui retirent l'argent déposé par leurs enfants. Cela prouve que l'obstacle que je vous signale est en grande partie temporaire et qu'il ne faut pas trop s'en inquiéter. L'épargne ne peut pas pénétrer dans les mŒurs subitement. Il faut que les générations élevées dans l'épargne grandissent. C'est une révolution lente, mais sûre que nous préparons; de m≖me que les arbres séculaires, cette révolution doit avoir le temps de jeter ses racines. Dès maintenant, mes amis, il faut travailler en vue de l'avenir.
Ce qui retarde le plus, à mon avis, le mouvement de l'épargne, c'est que les enfants quittent l'école à un âge où ils ne comprennent pas encore qu'épargner est un devoir. Qu'est-ce qu'un enfant de dix ans comprend en fait de devoirs, et surtout d'un devoir aussi pénible que l'épargne? Il oublie les leçons d'économie qu'il a reçues, de m≖me qu'il oublie tout ce qu'on lui a appris. Si l'on parvenait à retenir les enfants à l'école jusqu'à l'âge de 14 ans, notre but serait atteint, notre cause gagnée. A 14 ans, en effet, l'enfant aura acquis le goût de l'instruction, il ne manquera pas de fréquenter une école d'adultes, et là on le maintiendra dans les bonnes habitudes qu'il aura contractées à l'école primaire. Pour le moment, vous ne pouvez faire qu'une chose, pr≖cher l'épargne à toute occasion et sous toutes les formes. Il faut sans cesse demander aux enfants ce que c'est qu'épargner et pourquoi ils épargnent. Ces petits ≖tres sont si légers et l'épargne est chose si sérieuse, que l'on doit en parler souvent si l'on veut faire impression sur leur esprit. Un excellent moyen, c'est de prendre l'épargne comme sujet de devoir, soit de style, soit de calcul. Et ne vous contentez pas d'un seul devoir, donnez-en beaucoup, jusqu'à ce que l'épargne devienne une idée habituelle, et qu'elle entre pour ainsi dire dans le sang de vos élèves.
J'ai toujours conseillé aux instituteurs et aux institutrices de prendre eux-m≖mes un livret à la Caisse d'épargne. On pr≖che mal quand on ne pr≖che pas d'exemple. Puisque vous dites à vos élèves que l'épargne est une vertu, vous ≖tes tenus de pratiquer cette vertu, sinon vos paroles ne produiront aucun effet. Cela est surtout nécessaire quand il
La plupart des élèves qui quittent l'école cessent, dit-on, d'épargner. J'en ai dit la première cause : la sortie de l'école à un âge trop peu avancé. La faute cependant en est aussi aux instituteurs. Il y en a qui ne sont pas bien convaincus des bienfaits de l'épargne, disons mieux, de la nécessité d'enseigner l'économie aux enfants comme on leur enseigne toutes les vertus. C'est pour cette raison que je me suis décidé à vous faire cette conférence. Quand l'instituteur est à la hauteur de sa sainte mission, il conserve de l'influence sur les élèves qui quittent l'école; ils continueront à suivre ses conseils. Il y a un moyen bien facile de gagner cette influence : aimez les enfants, ils vous aimeront et leurs parents vous aimeront aussi. Demandez à ceux qui quittent, l'école de vous apporter leurs économies le dimanche; si vous avez su gagner leur affection, ils le feront. Suivez-les avec sollicitude dans leur carrière de travail, recommandez-leur sans cesse de fréquenter une école d'adultes; parlez aux parents, insistez, et vous finirez par vaincre tous les obstacles : il n'y en a aucun qui ne cède à l'affection.
Dans les écoles d'adultes, vous rencontrerez d'autres obstacles. Jusqu'ici elles sont fréquentées par des ouvriers et des ouvrières dont la plupart n'ont jamais été à l'école, ou qui, ayant quitté l'école trop jeunes, ont oublié le peu qu'ils
Le grand obstacle que vous rencontrerez chez les adultes, ce sont leurs habitudes de dépense et de dissipation. C'est comme une maladie contagieuse qui infecte les enfants au moment où ils quittent l'école. C'est l'époque la plus dangereuse de la vie de l'ouvrier. Je ne connais qu'un remède au mal, ce sont les sociétés ouvrières. Les ouvriers y trouvent des distractions, des amusements, en m≖me temps que l'instruction et la moralisation. Vous, mes amis, vous pouvez exercer une grande influence au sein de ces sociétés. Fréquentez-les,-donnez-y des conférences, qui ne doivent ≖tre que des causeries sur ce qui intéresse l'ouvrier, et sur-
Je demande beaucoup de vous, mes amis. J'ai commencé par vous dire que vous ≖tes les artisans de la civilisation. Pénétrez-vous bien de la grandeur de votre mission, et remplissez-la avec zèle et dévouement. Vous trouverez votre bonheur dans cette vie de sacrifice, car le bonheur consiste à aimer. Et qui donc est plus heureux que vous sous ce rapport? Chaque année amène sur les bancs de l'école une génération nouvelle, donc des enfants à aimer, et qui vous rendront l'affection que vous leur témoignez. Ne vous plaignez pas de votre humble condition, car en vérité vous ≖tes les privilégiés de ce monde : vous aimez et vous ≖tes aimés jusqu'au dernier jour de votre vie. N'enviez pas les richesses; qui donc est plus riche que vous? Vous possédez des trésors d'affection, et ces trésors sont inépuisables.
Heureux ceux d'entre vous qui comprennent la sainteté de leur vocation!
1. La Caisse d'épargne est placée sous la garantie de l'Etat (art. 1er de la loi du
La garantie de l'Etat est un point capital; elle offre une entière sécurité aux déposants. Pourquoi l'Etat a-t-il donné sa garantie à la Caisse d'épargne? L'état a voulu mettre les déposants à l'abri de toute perte, afin d'encourager les classes laborieuses à économiser, et à placer leurs économies à la caisse. L'état, c'est la société tout entière; c'est donc la société qui par la témoigne sa sollicitude aux classes ouvrières. Voilà un grand service que les classes supérieures rendent aux classes laborieuses. Il n'est donc pas vrai, comme on le prétend, que la société soit indifférente à la destinée des ouvriers. Elle leur vient en aide, à condition qu'ils s'aident eux m≖mes. Il dépend d'eux d'améliorer leur condition en économisant, et l'Etat leur garantit ces économies. L'état assure donc les ouvriers contre la misère, pourvu que de leur cÔté ils fassent un effort pour épargner. Ainsi le proverbe dit vrai, en disant : aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera.
2. On peut déposer à la Caisse les sommes les plus modiques, à parti d'un franc (art. 20 de la loi du
C'est un des grands avantages de la Caisse d'épargne, de procurer un placement pour de petites sommes. Autrefois ceux qui épargnaient, gardaient leurs économies à la maison, en les cachant dans leur lit, ou en les enfouissant sous terre. Cela les exposait à perdre tout ce qu'ils avaient épargné, puisqu'ils pouvaient ≖tre volés. Puis l'argent économisé ne produisait aucun intérét. A la Caisse d'épargne, on peut
3. La Caisse paye aux déposants un intér≖t de 3 p c. par an. (Art. 10 de la loi du
L'intér≖t est peu élevé. Mais il faut remarquer d'abord que les déposants peuvent demander le remboursement quand ils Veulent; la Caisse doit donc constamment conserver disponibles une partie de ses fonds qui ne produit pas d'intér≖t. Puis la Caisse d'épargne ne fait pas de spéculations, elle ne peut donc pas réaliser de grands bénéfices; par suite, elle ne peut pas payer de gros intér≖ts. Pourquoi la Caisse ne spécule-t-elle pas? Si celui gui spécule peut faire de grands bénéfices, il peut aussi faire de grandes pertes. Cela se voit tous les jours. Or, la Caisse d'épargne ne doit pas perdre. On demandera qui profite des bénéfices, s'ils dépassent 3 p. c.? La loi de Un arrèté royal du
Une fois que les dépÔts dépassent cent francs, les déposants ont encore un autre moyen d'augmenter leur revenu. Aux termes de l'article 25 de la loi, "les sommes versées sont, à la demande des déposants, converties en fonds publics belges. "C'est-à-dire que celui qui a plus de cent francs à la Caisse d'épargne peut demander qu'avec cette somme l'on achète une rente sur l'Etat, au capital de 100 francs, ce qui lui donnera un intér≖t de 4 à 4 ½ p. c. L'administration de la Caisse se charge d'acheter les fonds pour les déposants; de plus, s'ils le désirent, elle garde les extraits d'inscription au grand livre, elle touche les intér≖ts à leur profit, et en porte le montant à leur compte. Mais dés que les déposants ont échangé leurs dépÔts contre des fonds publics, ils ne sont plus créanciers de la Caisse, ils deviennent créanciers de l'Etat, ils sont rentiers, et subissent les chances de tout rentier. Si le cours de la rente monte, ils gagnent en la vendant; si le cours baisse, ils perdent. L'Etat ne leur doit plus aucune garantie.
4. La loi ne limite pas le montant des sommes que l'on peut déposer à
5. Aux termes de la loi du er janvier 1870
Les bureaux sont ouverts : tous les jours, m≖me les dimanches, à la Caisse centrale à Bruxelles et dans les bureaux de poste.
Les jours ouvrables seulement chez les agents de la Banque Nationale et, dans les succursales, aux jours et heures indiqués par leurs règlements.
Il est défendu à tous les agents et employés chargés du service de la Caisse d'épargne, de donner des renseignements, aux personnes étran gères à l'administration, sur les opérations des déposants.
Le premier versement donne lieu à une inscription sur le registre matricule.
Le déposant doit déclarer s'il verse pour son compte ou au nom d'un tiers. On inscrit sur le registre les nom et prénoms, le lieu et la date de la naissance, l'âge, la profession et la demeure de la personne pour compte de qui le dépÔt est effectué. Le déposant est invité à apposer sa signature sur le registre; s'il ne sait pas signer on en fait mention.
Le registre matricule n'a pas d'autre destination que de fournir les éléments les plus nécessaires pour s'assurer de l'identité de la personne qui se présente pour retirer des fonds déposés.
Un livret est remis gratuitement à chaque déposant, lors du premier versement.
Pour les versements ultérieurs, il suffit de présenter le livret; il n'est pas nécessaire que celui qui le présente en soit le titulaire; on ne de-mande pas qu'il produise une autorisation ni une procuration. La loi cherche à faciliter les dépÔts, en rendant les formalités aussi simples que possible.
Le livret est nominatif et sert de titre au déposant.
En cas de perte de son livret, le titulaire peut en obtenir un nouveau, qu'on appelle un duplicata, c'est-à-dire un double, en adressant une demande, par écrit, au conseil d'administration. Pour faciliter ces demandes, on a imprimé des formules que le déposant remplit; il signe sa demande, et la signature est légalisée par le bourgmestre. Ce duplicata doit ≖tre payé.
6. Les versements faits à la Caisse d'épargne produisent intér≖t à partir du 1er ou du 16 du mois qui suit immédiatement le dépÔt, ainsi au plus tard à la fin de la quinzaine (loi de
Pourquoi l'intér≖t ne court-il pas immédiatement après le versement? Il faut souvent plusieurs jours pour trouver l'occasion de faire fructifier l'argent déposé. Car, pour pouvoir payer des intér≖ts, il faut que la Caisse d'épargne emploie les sommes qui lui sont confiées. Cet emploi consiste principalement en escompte d'effets souscrits par des propriétaires, des entrepreneurs de travaux publics, des industriels; de sorte que l'épargne des ouvriers rentrant dans la circulation, vient aider au développement du travail national.
Il faut un certain temps pour faire ces placements. Ainsi il se passe plusieurs jours pendant lesquels les sommes déposées ne rapportent rien à la Caisse, et par suite la Caisse ne paye l'intér≖t qu'à partir de la fin de la quinzaine.
Régulièrement, l'inscription de la somme versée doit se faire tout de suite, au moment m≖me du versement. Mais, quand il y a beaucoup de déposants, cela devient matériellement impossible. La Caisse a le droit
7. Après l'expiration de la quinzaine pendant laquelle le versement a été effectué, les déposants peuvent, demander le remboursement total ou partiel des sommes qu'ils ont déposées à la Caisse. C'est un des grands avantages de la Caisse d'épargne. Les ouvriers économisent, comme on dit, afin d'avoir une pomme pour la soif. Il importe donc qu'ils puissent réclamer immédiatement leurs économies. Il y a des ouvriers qui n'aiment point de placer leur argent à la Caisse d'épargne, parce qu'ils préfèrent de l'avoir sous la main, en cas de besoin. Ils ne réfléchissent pas que la Caisse d'épargne leur offre la m≖me commodité, et que de plus ils profitent de l'intér≖t des sommes déposées, tandis que l'argent qu'ils gardent chez eux ne produit rien.
La loi de
Pour toute somme supérieure, le déposant doit prévenir d'avance le Directeur général de la Caisse d'épargne, savoir :
Quinze jours pour plus de 100 francs et moins de 500 francs;
Un mois pour 500 francs et moins de 1,000 francs;
Deux mois pour 1,000 francs et moins de 3,000 francs;
Six mois pour 3,000 francs et plus.
Ces délais peuvent ≖tre abrégés par le Conseil d'administration, à la demande des déposants qui trouveront des formules imprimés dans tous les bureaux chargés du service de la Caisse d'épargne.
En permettant aux déposants de demander tout de suite le rembour-sement d'une somme de 100 francs et m≖me de 20 francs, il est suffi-samment pourvu aux nécessités do l'ouvrier, qui peut d'ailleurs obtenir un nouveau remboursement chaque semaine.
Les remboursements sont opérés contre quittance, sur la présentation du livret. Quand le déposant ne sait ou ne peut signer, la quittance est remplacée par un certificat signé de deux témoins. S'il ne se pré-sente pas lui-m≖me pour obtenir son remboursement, il doit donner une procuration authentique ou sous seing privé. Cette procuration peut
Si le titulaire du livret est mineur, le remboursement est demandé par le père, ou par le survivant des père et mère, ou par le tuteur. La quittance est souscrite par ces m≖mes personnes.
Les sommes déposées cessent de produire des intér≖ts à partir du 1er ou du 16 de chaque mois qui précède l'époque de leur remboursement.
Le retrait de toute somme qui n'excède point 20 francs dans les bureaux de poste ou 100 francs à la caisse et dans les agences de la Banque, pouvant ≖tre opéré sans avis préalable, lorsqu'un semblable retrait absorbe la totalité du dépÔt, les intér≖ts qui peuvent encore rester dus sont payés dans la quinzaine.
Pour les dépÔts qui s'élèvent à plus de 20 francs, dans les bureaux de poste, ou à plus de 100 francs, à la caisse centrale ou dans les agences de la Banque, un remboursement total comprend le capital et les intér≖ts.
Mais dans l'un comme dans l'autre cas, le livret est éteint, lors m≖me que le titulaire refuserait de toucher les intér≖ts qui lui sont dus.
Faute par le déposant de s'≖tre présenté au jour indiqué, ou au plus tard le quinzième ou le dernier jour du mois qui suit la date fixée pour le remboursement, sa demande est considérée comme non avenue. S'il persiste à vouloir retirer son dépÔt en tout ou en partie, il doit renouveler sa demande.
Les intér≖ts se calculant par quinzaine, le montant de la somme à payer pour un remboursement total s'accroît d'une quinzaine à la quinzaine suivante : les bordereaux de préparation doivent donc ≖tre modifiés lorsque le remboursement n'est pas effectué à l'échéance.
8. Les intér≖ts des sommes déposées à la Caisse d'épargne sont calculés après le 31 décembre de chaque année; ils sont ajoutés au capital, et produisent de nouveaux intér≖ts à partir du 1er janvier.
La capitalisation des intér≖ts est un immense avantage pour les déposants. En calculant l'intér≖t à 3 p. c., les sommes déposées à la Caisse sont doublées après 24 ans; et à 4 p. c., elles sont doublées après 18 ans. En économisant un franc par mois, l'ouvrier aura au bout de 8 ans un capital de plus de 100 francs, en calculant l'intér≖t à 3 p. c. La capitalisation des intér≖ts fait que l'argent ne dort jamais; les déposants s'enrichissent sans cesse, et ne perdent pas un jour d'intér≖t.
Dans les comptes tenus par la Caisse d'épargne, à chaque versement
anticipé est porté comme si la somme versée devait rester intacte jusqu'à la fin de l'année. Toutes les fois qu'un remboursement est effectué dans le cours de l'année, ce remboursement donne lieu à un intér≖t dit rétrograde, qui constitue le déposant débiteur du montant de l'intér≖t sur la somme payée depuis le commencement de la quinzaine, pendant laquelle ce payement a lieu, jusqu'à la fin de l'année.
On appelle cet intér≖t rétrogade parce qu'il réagit sur l'intér≖t anticipé, en ce sens qu'il en doit ≖tre déduit.
Il faut remarquer que les quinzaines se calculent du 1er au 15 ou du 16 à la fin du mois. Un versement effectué, par exemple, le 5 et retiré le 30 du m≖me mois, est remboursé sans intér≖ts quoiqu'il ait été en dépÔt à la caisse pendant 25 jours; parce que l'intér≖t n'a commencé à courir que le 16 et que la somme retirée a cessé d'≖tre productive d'intér≖t ce m≖me jour.
L'intér≖t ne se calcule pas sur les fractions de franc (loi de
Il est bon que les déposants vérifient le calcul des intér≖ts. Quand il n'y a pas de remboursement, la chose est très-simple; on calcule l'intér≖t à 3 p. c. pour chaque somme versée, à partir du 1 er ou du 16 du mois qui suit le dépÔt.
Quand il y a des remboursements, le calcul est plus compliqué sans ≖tre bien difficile.
De m≖me que les comptes tenus par la Caisse d'épargne au bureau central à Bruxelles, les livrets doivent toujours indiquer la situation exacte de l'avoir des déposants. On obtient ce résultat en faisant, après chaque inscription, une addition si c'est un versement, ou une soustrac-tion si c'est un remboursement.
Lorsque l'on veut arr≖ter un compte, on fait l'addition, d'une part, des intér≖ts anticipés et, d'autre part, des intér≖ts rétrogrades dont le montant doit ≖tre déduit de la somme des intér≖ts anticipés; le solde est ajouté à celui des capitaux renseigné par le compte et par le livret, pour établir l'avoir total du déposant, soit à la fin, soit dans le cours de l'année quand un remboursement total est demandé.
9. Les dépÔts se font parfois pour des tiers, à titre de don, de legs, de prix ou de récompense.
10. Le déposant qui change de résidence peut demander, par transfert, un nouveau livret qui lui permettra de continuer ses versements ou de retirer ses fonds dans la localité qu'il se propose d'habiter.
11. Afin d'assurer la marche régulière du service de la Caisse d'épar-gne par les bureaux de poste, MM. les ministres des finances et des travaux publics ont arr≖té de commun accord quelques dispositions qui modifient les instructions concernant la comptabilité de la Caisse d'épargne. L'attention des déposants doit ≖tre particulièrement appelée sur les dispositions suivantes:
Le Quand la somme versée dépasse vingt francs, le déposant Il faul qu'il donne tres-exactement son adresse. Cette réclamation doit ≖tre adressée au Dans les trois premiers mois de chaque année, tous les livrets doivent ≖tre envoyés à l'administration centrale de la Caisse d'épargne, pour y faire inscrire le montant des intér≖ts acquis au 31 décembre précédent. A cette fin, les déposants en font la remise an bureau de poste où le livret a été délivré, contre un récépissé constatant le montant du solde du dépÔt.
maximum des dépÔts à recevoir par les bureaux de poste est limité à cinq mille francs par déposant, à moins d'une autorisation spé-ciale de l'administration de la Caisse d'épargne.Directeur général de la Caisse générale d'épargne et de retraite à Bruxelles, soit directement par lettre, soit par l'intermédiaire du percepteur des postes ou du bourg-mestre de la commune où le déposant à sa résidence. Les lettres adressées au directeur général de la Caisse ne doivent pas ≖tre affranchies.
Le livret est restitué dans le plus bref délai.
L'épargne a été introduite dans les écoles communales de Gand au mois
La brochure publiée sous le titre : l'épargne dans les écoles com-munales de Gand, expose comment l'épargne y a été introduite et comment elle s'y est répandue. Ici nous nous bornons à donner quelques indications sur la marche suivie par les instituteurs.
Les élèves peuvent apporter leurs épargnes tous les jours, le matin et l'après-dîner. L'instituteur les recueille au commencement de la classe et reçoit toute somme, quelque modique qu'elle soit, m≖me un centime. 11 inscrit par ordre de date sur un cahier, dont chaque page forme un compte et présente 12 colonnes, pour les 12 mois de l'année, et 31 lignes pour les jours de chaque mois. L'administration de la Caisse d'épargne a fait imprimer de ces cahiers et les donne gratis.
Chaque élève reçoit un feuillet détaché, duplicata de son compte, sur lequel lui ou le maître inscrit les versements. C'est une garantie pour les parents; ils peuvent contrÔler facilement les dépÔts faits par leurs enfants, et constater si ceux-ci ont versé moins ou plus que ce qu'ils reçoivent. C'est aussi une garantie pour l'instituteur.
Pour éviter que ces feuillets ne se perdent, on les plie en deux, on y met une couverture, sur laquelle on inscrit le nom de l'élève. Cela res-semble alors à un petit cahier.
Lorsque les versements ont atteint le chiffre d'un franc, le dépÔt en est fait pour compte de l'élève, et il est inscrit sur un livret à son nom.
Partout où des agences de la Banque Nationale sont établies, les versements sont opérés dans ces agences pour la ville et les communes avoisinantes.
Pour les localités qui sont à une trop grande distance des agences ou de la caisse centrale à Bruxelles, les versements se font chez les per-cepteurs des postes ou dans les succursales de la Caisse d'épargne.
Les instructions recommandent de faire apposer la signature du dé-posant sur le registre matricule. Cette mesure de précaution permet
Pour le mineur, la quittance devant ≖tre souscrite par la personne chargée de l'administration de ses biens ou de sa tutelle, il est superflu de faire signer les enfants sur le registre matricule.
Les versements faits au nom des élèves des écoles doivent ≖tre ac-compagnés de bordereaux dressés par l'instituteur ou l'institutrice. Ces bordereaux, dont le modèle est différent pour les premiers versements et pour les versements subséquents, sont remis gratuitement par la Caisse d'épargne aux directeurs des écoles, et de m≖me que les cahiers dont il est parlé plus haut, ces imprimés leur sont adressés, soit par le bourgmestre de la commune, soit par l'agent chez lequel ils font leurs versements.
Les livrets des déposants doivent ≖trs joints aux bordereaux.
Chaque versement à la Caisse d'épargne devant ≖tre d'un franc, au moins, l'instituteur aura constamment entre les mains les centimes déposés par ses élèves jusqu'à ce que leur somme fasse un franc pour chacun : ce sera environ cinquante centimes en moyenne. S'il a deux cents élèves déposants, il pourrait donc avoir à conserver une somme de cent francs qui resterait continuellement improductive, ce qui ne serait pas sans inconvénients. Il y a un moyen très-simple d'y obvier. L'instituteur peut se faire délivrer un livret créé au nom de' l'école. Toutes les sommes reçues de ses élèves sont versées in globo sur ce livret. Dés que le compte ouvert à l'un des élèves atteint la limite d'un franc, le livret de l'école et celui de l'élève sont présentés au bureau où s'opèrent les versements, avec une note demandant le transfert, de l'un à l'autre livret, de la somme indiquée. Les intér≖ts acquis sur le livret de l'école pourront ≖tre appliqués à couvrir les pertes qui résultent parfois du maniement de menues monnaies.
Il est nécessaire que l'instituteur conserve les minutes des bordereaux.
As an introduction to the fifth edition of my father's work, and in compliance with repeated requests, I shall offer a sketch—though it must be an imperfect one—of his life; chiefly for the sake of telling why and how this book was written.
Edward Kellogg was born at Norwalk, Conn., on the
When he was about thirty years old his mind was deeply wrought upon by questions of theology and morals, and reading the Bible only, he abandoned the so-called orthodox tenets; when matters of business were not immediately before him, he studied ardently in his own thoughts the relations of man to his Creator and to his fellow-man; on his way from one engagement to another, he usually pondered the meaning of some text of Scripture. He read very few books, but he talked much with other men, and
In, are we coming to?" my father instantly replied in his pleasant way, "It is plain what you and I are coming to, Mr. P.: we are coming to our tow trousers again;" whereupon the ques-
Yet, while he thought carefully and anxiously of his obligations and attended faithfully to all that was to be done, his mind turned with earnest and eager inquiry to the cause of the great calamity in which he saw so many involved. He perceived that it was the result of the existing monetary system, and he began to study out the origin of the evils. He soon became convinced that the money of a country, being a public medium of exchange, ought not to be put under the control of private corporations, but ought to be instituted by the government for the benefit of the whole people, and so managed that usury could not be exacted, and that losses in exchange in sending money from one part of the country to another should not be incurred. His soul was moved with indignation at the extortions of usurers, which came continually under his notice; and he caused a friend to write a pamphlet setting forth some facts that he furnished. This was printed in
He still worked in his mind at the problem, for he knew he had not solved it. He saw that money ought not to be made of gold and silver, which cannot be had in sufficient quantities to meet any great financial crisis, and which nobody wants when confidence exists; that it must be a legal representative of value, and thought it ought to be founded on real estate, or on the public credit resting on the national resources; he saw how to issue it in exchange for mortgages of productive real property—there was no great public debt—but how to redeem it? He tried it in every way he could imagine; he knew there must be some right way of doing it, but what was it? it was of no use to point out the evil unless he could show a remedy for it. He thought upon it by night and by day, and at last, after looking for it three years, one night in the spring of Redeem it with a Bond Bearing Interest." He turned it to and fro for a moment
I have found it!"
Deeply impressed with the value of his discovery, he began at once to write out his ideas. He had had only a common school education, and, as he used to say, "very little of that." He thought himself "the furthest man in the world from writing a book." He disliked to write letters, and made his clerks write for him if possible. But now, morning and evening in the midst of his family, and in moments snatched from business at his counting-house, he set down upon paper the new and stirring thoughts with which his mind overflowed. He had ever been apt to teach, adapting himself carefully to the minds of others, and taking the greatest pains to make facts and ideas intelligible to them; and he wrote simply and vividly. But thinking some revision was desirable, and not having the time nor the practice to do it easily himself, he caused one of the young men in his employment to copy and amend for him. One evening—I was then seventeen years old and was always hovering about him—he showed me some leaves of the manuscript. In my secret heart I thought the amendments were not well made; but I only said to my beloved father, "I think I could do that." A little surprised, he rejoined, "Do you? well, you may try." The next morning he left some pages with me; at night I had a copy ready for him, which he altogether approved; and from that day I became his "scribe," and presently his devout disciple. He was intensely moved by the wrongs that he saw everywhere weighing on the workers of the world through this gigantic, hidden power of money; he knew he had devised the means to overthrow this power, so he worked on at a white heat. Now his relatives and friends began to remonstrate with him. One man of mark, a lifelong friend whom he greatly valued, said to him: "Mr. Kellogg, this is the most difficult part of political economy; no one has ever understood it. It has puzzled the wisest heads from the beginning until now, and you cannot solve it: you will only succeed in bewildering yourself. Besides, your own affairs are in a very perplexing condition and require all your attention; and it is against your interest to do anything about it." To which he replied: "I have an interest in the human family, and I have discovered something that is for their benefit. I shall write it; I should if I knew that I could make a million of dollars if I did not; and that if I did, I should live on a crust of bread and die in a garret." So the writing went on.
About the last of
"For the purpose I have before mentioned [to supply the people with a good and sound currency], the United States should establish an institution, which I shall here call a Safety Fund. I give it this name because I think it will be the means of securing to the producers a fair remuneration for their productions. It will save us from the power of any foreign nation over our Internal Improvements, or anything else of great importance. It will enable the nation—as far as man can have such control—to decide its own destiny. Therefore it will be a National Safety Fund.
"In order to explain the nature of this Safety Fund. I will here write out, in full, two bills, one for a circulating medium, the other for a Treasury Note. By reading these the system may be almost entirely understood. Should such an institution be established, the bills might be more brief, as the laws on the subject would be known, and it would be unnecessary to have as much expressed as in the following:
"The United States promise to pay to A. B., or bearer, at their
Safety Fund, in the City of——, One Hundred Dollars, in a Treasury Note, bearing interest at the rate of two per cent, per annum, payable half-yearly in gold or silver coin; and until such
"One year from the first day of May next, or any time thereafter, the United States promise to pay to A. B., or bearer, in the City of——, One Hundred Dollars, in Safety Fund Notes; and until such payment is made, to pay interest thereon half-yearly on the first days of May and November, at the rate of two per cent, per annum in gold or silver."
"It will be perceived that the note intended as a circulating medium is made a tender for all debts, that it is issued by Government, and payable in Treasury Notes. The Treasury Notes are to bear interest; hence there can be no money in circulation but what the holder can at any time put on interest where the loan would be entirely safe, and the interest payable half-yearly in specie; so that money can, at all times, be loaned for a certain income secured by the nation. One year after the first of May ensuing, the holder can convert the loan again into the legal currency of the country, so there never can be a surplus of money which may not be made productive."
The newspaper contains no date of publication, but the leading article of the New York Tribune of
My father then did his utmost to circulate the essay. He sent it to many editors, the paper itself containing a request that they would copy parts of it for the good of the public. On the 28th of October of the same year, a synopsis of it in four columns was printed in the Tribune; and, in December of the same year, it was issued, at his cast, as a supplement to the New York Commercial Advertiser. Then he had it put in pamphlet form, with some additions, and stereotyped. It was called "Currency: the Evil and
About this time or a little later, he gave up business as a merchant, and, retaining an office in New York, spent his time in the care and improvement of his property. He continued to think and to write on the money question. Sometimes he wrote at length, but oftener a few pages only on any point that was in his mind. When a "good idea" occurred to him he set it down. Sometimes the same in slightly varied form appeared often, especially in regard to the representative value of money. The subject was so important, the need of clear ideas and simple illustrations to combat the old errors so evident, it was all so urgent that he could not say it too emphatically or too much. Then the subject ramified in such a way; it was so vast, touching upon most of the material interests of men; it lay at the foundation of public justice and good morals: the new system was capable of effecting a beneficent revolution, and would, too, by and by. All these things and more were seeking expression. His mind worked so deeply that he often went along the street, noticing nobody, seeing only the idea that he was pursuing and endeavoring to seize.
Some time after the essay was published, when he had a mass of papers thus written, various in subject and length, he told me he wanted me to "arrange them in some order," copy, and get the whole ready for the printer. Though dismayed at being called upon to set in order the subject-matter, it did not occur to me to say I could not do it; I must at least try, if my father expected it. After a time I thought I saw the proper sequence of the argument, and sorted and arranged the papers in chapters and sections accordingly. Perhaps a less formal mode might have been better; but the author himself found no fault with it: he, with his originating mind, "would rather write ten than arrange one;" and he was occupied in searching out ideas and principles. Almost every day there was something new; a page or two came home on the back of a letter or on a sheet of paper doubled up in his pocket, and must be assigned to the proper place; sometimes a section rewritten because the new was better, or to introduce fitly a fresh idea or illustration; then a large part of the chapter on the banking system was written. I used to go over it all again and again by myself during the days while he was away at his office, occasionally suggesting the writing of something on this or that point to fill out the course of thought; and in the evenings and on Sundays he read
The book was published in the winter of
He hoped he had now written something that would awaken the public attention and direct it to this momentous question; but his book failed to attract much notice, and his plan was called visionary, impracticable, Utopian. Here and there a man read it who perceived its power. One old friend of his, president of a bank in Maryland, said, "Mr. Kellogg, I have read your book, and it is all true, every word of it; but nobody will buy it, nobody will read it, and it will lie on the shelf: but if you will write one on the other side of the question, it will go like hot cakes." A year or two after it was printed, a gentleman, to whom he had lent a copy, said to him, "Mr. Kellogg, your book is true; it is in advance of the time, and the people of this generation do not appreciate it; but future generations will raise monuments to your memory." An editor, too, said to him, "Do you know that this book of yours is the most radical one that ever was written?" Yes, he knew it; nothing was new to him in regard to the deep-reaching nature of his work. He remarked, "This will break down every despotism. As soon as the system is
At various times he had written papers expressly for certain public men, setting forth the advantages of his project, hoping to gain the ear of some one who might speak of it effectively to the people. He wrote to Henry Clay, and paid him a visit, making a great effort to interest him; but nobody cared for this newly-discovered truth. He spoke often of the oppression of the laboring classes of England, and wrote an article showing how to remedy it, which he sent to the London Economist, but it was not printed. When the book was first published he sent it to Proudhon, and the prominent members of the French Assembly, as well as to other statesmen in foreign countries; ever hoping somebody might perceive its worth, who would endeavor to put it in practice for the good of the people. He placed it in the hands of editors, members of Congress, and Cabinet officers at home. He used to say, "Some men tell me this is a very good theory, but it would not work in practice; but a theory is of no value unless it can be put in practice; the practicability of a theory and the good results flowing from it are what make any theory valuable." It burdened his soul that he could not make men understand, nor even fairly look at a subject laden with the liberty and well-being of mankind. The few instances I have noted are almost the only ones I can recall of a cordial recognition of his work.
He continued to write occasionally when some fresh thought or striking illustration occurred to him; and he spoke of making a new book; thinking again that perhaps he could produce something different in expression and illustration, yet the same in principle, which would reach the public ear. But when he considered that the people were not yet alive to the importance of a better monetary system, and that a great deal of thought and labor had been given to the book, he resolved to take it as a basis, and make it more valuable and interesting by incorporating the new matter with it. Re-marking to him once in reference to a passage, "Father, that is so simple it does not seem as if there were any need of saying it," he
He was the most companionable of men : and though his conversation naturally turned to matters of government, law, or religion, he liked lighter topics too; was quick at repartee, could tell a good story, was fond of games, and ever loved a joke. He had a great respect for the common mind; he loved little children and tenderly drew out their thoughts: he had a lively sympathy for the pleasures and occupations of others, and everybody could do his best in that cheerful and inspiriting presence. He was withal a man of an un-usually beautiful and dignified aspect; of a manly form, above the middle height, having finely cut features, a pure red and white complexion, dark blue eyes, a firm mouth, and soft gray hair lying in abundance on a noble head. His countenance was expressive of power, refinement and benevolence. When he was conversing on some of his favorite topics, and especially when speaking of the excellent results to flow from just laws, his face sometimes assumed the innocent and joyful expression of a child. The moral effect of his system was always uppermost with him. While he foresaw, perhaps as few others can, the physical benefits to follow upon its establishment, the prospect of peace and good-will among men was the one which most delighted him. "The millennium can never come," he would say, "until this system goes into operation; but then it can come!" The foundation of contracts being laid injustice, order and beauty in the state and in society could arise.
As I listened day by day to his conversation, I often thought of making a written memorandum of it, but did not. In arguing a question he frequently began at a distance so remote that one did not see the connection; and as he approached the point, he brought, by means of the train of thought, an unexpectedly great force to bear, carrying conviction to the mind of his hearer. He talked of
It was during the later years of his life, while his mind was occupied with these subjects, that a committee of gentlemen invited him to take the presidency of a bank, urging that if he would consent, such confidence was felt in his management that the stock would be taken immediately; and the United States Government appointed him to appraise the value of some lands; but he declined these offices, as he had previously declined a minor political one. I mention these otherwise trivial incidents to show his reputation as a practical man.
In the summer of cause of these calamities that wears me out." He wrote an article for the New York Tribune copied in the appendix of this book. The announcement of his approaching departure he received with the equanimity that distinguished him; saying, "It is usually our duty to prepare for life, but circumstances change; there is a debt of nature that we all must pay, and I have considered our duty in re-
He continued to go to his office as his strength permitted, and to attend to his affairs. At home he caused me to read his book through to him, after the lapse of seven or eight years listening to it with marked satisfaction, and saying that it was much better than he had thought it. When we came to the passage where it is said that those who neither lend nor borrow money, and have not the mental grasp to understand how the rate of interest affects the reward of their labor, shall yet benefit by the institution of the new system, he was visibly affected, and said, "If I did not know who wrote that book I should say, that sounds like Christian legislation!" He changed the title for the present one, made some amendments, dictated a few paragraphs, and from time to time spoke to me of some points which he desired to have enforced; especially that the rate of interest ought not to exceed the expense of instituting and circulating the money; but he added that at one per cent, it could not be made oppressive to the producers. He had previously said that no doubt an attempt would be made to lower the rate of interest gradually; but, in his judgment, it would be much better to bring it at once to the just standard; then every thing would adjust itself to that, and there would not be a series of readjustments consequent upon lower and lower rates. He said, "If there should be a war in this country, my system would be much more likely to go into operation; for the government would be compelled to issue a large amount of paper money to carry it on." Those who proposed and carried the legal tender act can tell what strength they derived from the facta and arguments of the New Monetary System, which was freely circulated among members of Congress and others at Washington.
Soon after this he could no more go out, nor go to his writing room, and for three weeks his family watched beside his dying-bed. He bore intense suffering with resolution and uncomplaining fortitude. Once as he lay apparently asleep I heard him say, "That is shortly expressed," and asking what he said, he replied, smiling, "I was dreaming—about usury, I guess." Again when I heard some word, he said again, "I was dreaming—pleasant dreams—all my thoughts are pleasant." To an old and valued orthodox friend, who, knowing he did not hold the usually received religious opinions, asked him how he should appear before a just God, he replied, in tones of solemn sweetness and serenity, "In regard to that I feel a perfect peace. You may think strange of it, Judge, but I do." Each day until the very close he gave directions respecting his affairs; in the extremity of death he did not neglect to greet a friend; and in perfect possession of his faculties up to the instant of his departure, on the
We who sat beside him day and night, and saw his grand composure, could but think of the old philosophers, to whom, in mind, he always seemed to me akin. My spirit went up with him to the company of the saints and reformers of every age. We laid the wasted body in a grave on Chestnut Hill in the Greenwood Cemetery; but not until a cast of his head had been taken, that the sculptor might reproduce in marble his lineaments, for those who shall some day desire to see his face.
I have now told, according to my ability, who and what he was who wrote this book, and how he was moved thereto; trusting that it may comfort and encourage those who are to endure the stress of the coming struggle; that they may know more intimately their pure and benign leader, to whom was denied this conflict which he so ardently sought; that he was not a closet thinker, as some have called him, but up to the close of a long life actively engaged in affairs; mingling freely with men and partaking of the ordinary cares and joys; though having endured toil and hardship, not a disappointed, but, in the main, a successful man; known to most of his business acquaintances in no capacity but as one of themselves, yet,
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