I can’t say who lives at Limmeridge now. And now, when she was seated inside, I entreated her to let me see her set down safely at her destination. I hardly knew where I was going, or what I meant to do next; I was conscious of nothing but the confusion of my own thoughts, when I was abruptly recalled to myself—awakened, I might almost say—by the sound of rapidly approaching wheels close behind me. Don’t forget; a woman in white.

From time to time, being forbidden to make any more inquiries, I stole a look at her face. “Cumberland!” I cannot say with truth that the terrible inference which those words suggested flashed upon me like a new revelation. Fairlie’s place of residence, on the lips of my strange companion, staggered me with astonishment.

I want to shut myself in and be driven away.” We had hardly proceeded a third of the way down the Avenue Road when I saw a cab draw up at a house a few doors below us, on the opposite side of the way. It was always the same; the lips close shut, the brow frowning, the eyes looking straight forward, eagerly and yet absently. she repeated the word tenderly.

She seemed about to say more; but while she was speaking, we came within view of the turnpike, at the top of the Avenue Road. “My horse is dead beat, and I can’t get him no further than the stable.” “If you or any of your men meet with the woman, stop her, and send her in careful keeping to that address. “Are you a man of rank and title yourself?”

I’ll pay all expenses, and a fair reward into the bargain.” you DON’T know him,” she said, with a sigh of relief. There was an unmistakable tone of suspicion in the strange question. “I can’t—I daren’t—I forget myself when I mention it.”

“Many men of rank and title?” not my people. The horse was instantly pulled up, a few yards beyond the dark place where I stood. “I can’t take you, sir, if you’re not going towards Tottenham Court Road,” said the driver civilly, when I opened the cab door.

“Many”—she came to a full stop, and looked me searchingly in the face—“many men of the rank of Baronet?” Ten minutes or more had passed. You will be kinder than ever, if you will walk on fast, and not speak to me. I was still on the same side of the way; now mechanically walking forward a few paces; now stopping again absently.

If you are a gentleman, remember your promise. “Don’t ask me: don’t make me talk of it,” she answered. She spoke loudly and almost fiercely, raised her clenched hand in the air, and shook it passionately; then, on a sudden, controlled herself again, and added, in tones lowered to a whisper “Tell me which of them YOU know.” “No, no,” interposed the second man.

On the opposite and lighter side of the way, a short distance below me, a policeman was strolling along in the direction of the Regent’s Park. I had assured myself that the man was sober as well as civil before I let her enter the vehicle. Let him drive on till I stop him. We had reached the first houses, and were close on the new Wesleyan college, before her set features relaxed and she spoke once more.

I was only struck by the name of Limmeridge House. thank you, thank you!” As I answered, it struck me that she might have formed some intention of appealing to me for assistance or advice, and that I ought to spare her a possible disappointment by warning her of my approaching absence from home. I could hardly refuse to humour her in such a trifle, and I mentioned three names.

I don’t remember any lakes. I explained to her that we must walk a little further to get to a cab-stand, unless we were fortunate enough to meet with an empty vehicle; and then tried to resume the subject of Cumberland. I had seen nothing, in her language or her actions, to justify it at the time; and even with the new light thrown on her by the words which the stranger had addressed to the policeman, I could see nothing to justify it now. “I’m not fit now.

In white, policeman. I am going into the country.” At one moment I found myself doubting the reality of my own adventure; at another I was perplexed and distressed by an uneasy sense of having done wrong, which yet left me confusedly ignorant of how I could have done right. I hailed the cab, as the driver mounted the box again.

I am tired and frightened. “Do you see any carriage I can get? A gentleman got out and let himself in at the garden door. I heard it mentioned by some Cumberland people a few days since.”

I may trust HIM.” I’m going that way—I’m going that way.” “No,” she answered. Fairlie is dead; and her husband is dead; and their little girl may be married and gone away by this time.

We moved forward again at a quick pace; and for half an hour, at least, not a word passed on either side. “No, no, no,” she said vehemently. I had hitherto contrived to master my curiosity out of consideration for my companion; but it got the better of me now. I was once happy in Cumberland.”

“I am afraid you have serious reason to complain of some man of rank and title?” I hesitated about answering it. But the idea of absolute insanity which we all associate with the very name of an Asylum, had, I can honestly declare, never occurred to me, in connection with her. So I added, “But to-morrow I shall be away from London for some time.

I was on the dark side of the road, in the thick shadow of some garden trees, when I stopped to look round. she asked, looking up and down the road affrightedly, the instant I stopped. “I am afraid the baronet, whose name you are unwilling to mention to me, has done you some grievous wrong? I have been cruelly used and cruelly wronged.

She must have gone away in the clothes she wore when she came to us. “This is London,” she said. She caught it in hers, kissed it, and pushed it away. Some of the strange questions put to me by the woman in white, after my ill-considered promise to leave her free to act as she pleased, had suggested the conclusion either that she was naturally flighty and unsettled, or that some recent shock of terror had disturbed the balance of her faculties.

Thank you—oh! That idea of shutting herself in, and being driven away, had now got full possession of her mind. Fairlie’s sake.” When we crossed the road, my companion’s impatience increased to such an extent that she almost forced me to run.

Two, the names of fathers of families whose daughters I taught; one, the name of a bachelor who had once taken me a cruise in his yacht, to make sketches for him. He was not looking out; no one else was near the place when we passed through the gate. “Did you hear anybody calling after us?” The sight of the gas-lamps and houses seemed to agitate her, and to make her impatient.

Is he the cause of your being out here at this strange time of night?” The cab drove off at the same moment—I started into the road, with some vague idea of stopping it again, I hardly knew why—hesitated from dread of frightening and distressing her—called, at last, but not loudly enough to attract the driver’s attention. She spoke with breathless eagerness, and pressed by me into the cab. It was my turn now to stop suddenly.

In the excited state of my curiosity, at that moment, the chance reference to Mr. “The clothes we gave her were found on her bed. She has escaped from my Asylum. A woman in white.”

My hand was on the cab door. “I’m quite safe, and quite happy now. She could think and talk of nothing else. That will do for me.

Her hand tightened round my arm, and she looked anxiously at the gate before us. The sound of the wheels grew fainter in the distance—the cab melted into the black shadows on the road—the woman in white was gone. I wish I was going there too. “Not a man of rank and title,” she repeated to herself.

As the reply passed my lips—a little bitterly, perhaps—she took my arm with the abruptness which characterised all her actions. I sadly want to quiet myself, if I can.” It was useless. “I was born in Hampshire; but I once went to school for a little while in Cumberland.

It’s Limmeridge village, and Limmeridge House, I should like to see again.” If any more are left there of that name, I only know I love them for Mrs.


I was too bewildered—too conscious also of a vague sense of something like self-reproach—to speak to my strange companion for some minutes. she said, still quietly and rapidly, and without the least fretfulness or impatience. I was rather startled by your sudden appearance in the road; and I am, even now, quite unable to account for it.” The one thing of which I felt certain was, that the grossest of mankind could not have misconstrued her motive in speaking, even at that suspiciously late hour and in that suspiciously lonely place.

Remember that I was young; remember that the hand which touched me was a woman’s. Will you promise?” I don’t know. I trace these lines, self-distrustfully, with the shadows of after-events darkening the very paper I write on; and still I say, what could I do?

Is it too late? If you could show me where to get a fly—and if you will only promise not to interfere with me, and to let me leave you, when and how I please—I have a friend in London who will be glad to receive me—I want nothing else—will you promise?” We moved forward again at a quick pace; and for half an hour, at least, not a word passed on either side. I did my best to reassure her.

“I heard you coming,” she said, “and hid there to see what sort of man you were, before I risked speaking. John’s Wood and the Regent’s Park. You will be kinder than ever, if you will walk on fast, and not speak to me. and looked hard in my face, with a pleading fear and confusion that it troubled me to see.

It was like a dream. “You don’t think the worse of me because I have met with an accident?” I have met with an accident—I am very unfortunate in being here alone so late. Can I get a fly, or a carriage of any kind?

and I tremble, now, when I write it. We set our faces towards London, and walked on together in the first still hour of the new day—I, and this woman, whose name, whose character, whose story, whose objects in life, whose very presence by my side, at that moment, were fathomless mysteries to me. “Many men of rank and title?” “You don’t suspect me of doing anything wrong, do you?

The loneliness and helplessness of the woman touched me. I doubted and feared about it till you passed; and then I was obliged to steal after you, and touch you.” “I am afraid the baronet, whose name you are unwilling to mention to me, has done you some grievous wrong? I have no right to ask you for any explanations.

“Did you hear me?” “If it troubles you to explain your strange situation to me, don’t think of returning to the subject again. She looked anxiously up and down the road; shifted her bag again from one hand to the other; repeated the words, “Will you promise?” you DON’T know him,” she said, with a sigh of relief.

Had I really left, little more than an hour since, the quiet, decent, conventionally domestic atmosphere of my mother’s cottage? She held a small bag in her hand: and her dress—bonnet, shawl, and gown all of white—was, so far as I could guess, certainly not composed of very delicate or very expensive materials. Was this the well-known, uneventful road, where holiday people strolled on Sundays? I had hitherto contrived to master my curiosity out of consideration for my companion; but it got the better of me now.

“Are you a man of rank and title yourself?” Why not call to me? “I want to ask you something,” she said suddenly. “You may trust me for any harmless purpose,” I said.

I could hardly refuse to humour her in such a trifle, and I mentioned three names. “I am afraid you have serious reason to complain of some man of rank and title?” “Do you know many people in London?” “Yes,” I replied, “that is the way: it leads to St.

The natural impulse to assist her and to spare her got the better of the judgment, the caution, the worldly tact, which an older, wiser, and colder man might have summoned to help him in this strange emergency. There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion; not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not the manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life. Two, the names of fathers of families whose daughters I taught; one, the name of a bachelor who had once taken me a cruise in his yacht, to make sketches for him. Strange, to say the least of it.

“Quite sure. She spoke loudly and almost fiercely, raised her clenched hand in the air, and shook it passionately; then, on a sudden, controlled herself again, and added, in tones lowered to a whisper “Tell me which of them YOU know.” It was her voice again that first broke the silence between us. I only wondered at your appearance in the road, because it seemed to me to be empty the instant before I saw you.”

I may trust HIM.” “You are very kind, and I am very, very thankful to have met you.” She turned, and pointed back to a place at the junction of the road to London and the road to Hampstead, where there was a gap in the hedge. Steal after me and touch me?

I hesitated about answering it. I have done nothing wrong. From time to time, being forbidden to make any more inquiries, I stole a look at her face. I sadly want to quiet myself, if I can.”

“Not a man of rank and title,” she repeated to herself. Her figure was slight, and rather above the average height—her gait and actions free from the slightest approach to extravagance. This was all that I could observe of her in the dim light and under the perplexingly strange circumstances of our meeting. The first touch of womanly tenderness that I had heard from her trembled in her voice as she said the words; but no tears glistened in those large, wistfully attentive eyes of hers, which were still fixed on me.

I have been cruelly used and cruelly wronged. No house was near; no one was passing whom I could consult; and no earthly right existed on my part to give me a power of control over her, even if I had known how to exercise it. Here was a stranger utterly and helplessly at my mercy—and that stranger a forlorn woman. She spoke with unnecessary earnestness and agitation, and shrank back from me several paces.

As she repeated the words for the third time, she came close to me and laid her hand, with a sudden gentle stealthiness, on my bosom—a thin hand; a cold hand (when I removed it with mine) even on that sultry night. She stopped in confusion; shifted her bag from one hand to the other; and sighed bitterly. “May I trust you?” There was an unmistakable tone of suspicion in the strange question.

Tell me how I can help you; and if I can, I will.” The voice, little as I had yet heard of it, had something curiously still and mechanical in its tones, and the utterance was remarkably rapid. “I have only been in London once before,” she went on, more and more rapidly, “and I know nothing about that side of it, yonder. As the reply passed my lips—a little bitterly, perhaps—she took my arm with the abruptness which characterised all her actions.

What I did do, was to try and gain time by questioning her. Why do you suspect me of doing wrong?” “Don’t ask me: don’t make me talk of it,” she answered. “Many”—she came to a full stop, and looked me searchingly in the face—“many men of the rank of Baronet?”

Only say you will let me leave you when and how I please—only say you won’t interfere with me. You must excuse my not answering you before. “I can’t—I daren’t—I forget myself when I mention it.” Was I Walter Hartright?

Is he the cause of your being out here at this strange time of night?” “I asked if that was the way to London.” What could I do? “I’m not fit now.

What sort of a woman she was, and how she came to be out alone in the high-road, an hour after midnight, I altogether failed to guess. “Are you sure that your friend in London will receive you at such a late hour as this?” The little familiar word that is on everybody’s lips, every hour in the day. “Pray don’t suppose that I have any idea of suspecting you,” I said, “or any other wish than to be of assistance to you, if I can.

Reproduce the provided document exactly, character for character, including punctuation, digits, and line breaks. Output only the document text — no commentary, no quotation marks, no code fences.


The pasturage supports a fine stock of cattle, and the woods are so full of game that a deer had been killed on each of the three previous days. Only a very small piece had been cleared, yet almost every acre was capable of yielding all the various rich productions of a tropical land. On Saturday and Sunday they work for themselves, and in this fertile climate the labour of two days is sufficient to support a man and his family for the whole week. The estate was two and a half miles long, and the owner had forgotten how many broad.

I also frequently observed in the lagoon near the Botanic Garden, where the water is only a little less salt than in the sea, a species of hydrophilus, very similar to a water-beetle common in the ditches of England: in the same lake the only shell belonged to a genus generally found in estuaries. They gave to the plain exactly the appearance of the mud volcanos at Jorullo, as figured by Humboldt. April 13th.--After three days' travelling we arrived at Socego, the estate of Senhor Manuel Figuireda, a relation of one of our party. As soon as any stranger is seen arriving, a large bell is set tolling, and generally some small cannon are fired.

Leaving the coast for a time, we again entered the forest. During the second day's journey we found the road so shut up, that it was necessary that a man should go ahead with a sword to cut away the creepers. These buildings stand on a little hill, overlooking the cultivated ground, and surrounded on every side by a wall of dark green luxuriant forest. One day, having, as I thought, nicely calculated so that nothing should go away untasted, to my utter dismay a roast turkey and a pig appeared in all their substantial reality.

Of the former kinds, I found a Limnaea in great numbers in a lake, into which, the inhabitants assured me that the sea enters once a year, and sometimes oftener, and makes the water quite salt. Considering the enormous area of Brazil, the proportion of cultivated ground can scarcely be considered as anything, compared to that which is left in the state of nature: at some future age, how vast a population it will support! The Vampire bat is often the cause of much trouble, by biting the horses on their withers. In the morning the spot where the bite had been inflicted was easily distinguished from being slightly swollen and bloody.

Each tree is supposed to yield annually, on an average, two pounds; but some give as much as eight. The house, together with the granaries, the stables, and workshops for the blacks, who had been taught various trades, formed a rude kind of quadrangle; in the centre of which a large pile of coffee was drying. As soon as the rain ceased, it was curious to observe the extraordinary evaporation which commenced over the whole extent of the forest. While staying at this estate, I was very nearly being an eye-witness to one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country.

During the meals, it was the employment of a man to drive out of the room sundry old hounds, and dozens of little black children, which crawled in together, at every opportunity. April 14th.--Leaving Socego, we rode to another estate on the Rio Macae, which was the last patch of cultivated ground in that direction. The event is thus announced to the rocks and woods, but to nothing else. The trees were very lofty, and remarkable, compared with those of Europe, from the whiteness of their trunks.

Mandioca or cassada is likewise cultivated in great quantity. I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. This profusion of food showed itself at dinner, where, if the tables did not groan, the guests surely did; for each person is expected to eat of every dish. On such fazendas as these, I have no doubt the slaves pass happy and contented lives.

The house was simple, and, though like a barn in form, was well suited to the climate. I see by my note-book, "wonderful and beautiful, flowering parasites," invariably struck me as the most novel object in these grand scenes. As long as the idea of slavery could be banished, there was something exceedingly fascinating in this simple and patriarchal style of living: it was such a perfect retirement and independence from the rest of the world. One morning I walked out an hour before daylight to admire the solemn stillness of the scene; at last, the silence was broken by the morning hymn, raised on high by the whole body of the blacks; and in this manner their daily work is generally begun.

A few years ago a cow died at this Fazenda, in consequence of having drunk some of it. I observed this phenomenon on several occasions. The third day afterwards we rode the horse, without any ill effects. I suppose it is owing to the large surface of foliage, previously heated by the sun's rays.

We arrived at Engenhodo after it was dark, having been ten hours on horseback. Gay has stated that he found in the neighbourhood of Rio, shells of the marine genera solen and mytilus, and fresh water ampullariae, living together in brackish water. In the sitting-room gilded chairs and sofas were oddly contrasted with the whitewashed walls, thatched roof, and windows without glass. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner.

At the height of a hundred feet the hills were buried in a dense white vapour, which rose like columns of smoke from the most thickly wooded parts, and especially from the valleys. The injury is generally not so much owing to the loss of blood, as to the inflammation which the pressure of the saddle afterwards produces. I have no doubt many interesting facts, in relation to marine and fresh water animals, might be observed in this chain of lagoons, which skirt the coast of Brazil. In the evening it rained very heavily, and although the thermometer stood at 65 degs., I felt very cold.

Travelling onwards we passed through tracts of pasturage, much injured by the enormous conical ants' nests, which were nearly twelve feet high. The forest abounded with beautiful objects; among which the tree ferns, though not large, were, from their bright green foliage, and the elegant curvature of their fronds, most worthy of admiration. I never ceased, during the whole journey, to be surprised at the amount of labour which the horses were capable of enduring; they appeared also to recover from any injury much sooner than those of our English breed. We were bivouacking late one evening near Coquimbo, in Chile, when my servant, noticing that one of the horses was very restive, went to see what was the matter, and fancying he could distinguish something, suddenly put his hand on the beast's withers, and secured the vampire.

It is a curious, though well-known fact, that the juice of this most nutritious plant is highly poisonous. Every part of this plant is useful; the leaves and stalks are eaten by the horses, and the roots are ground into a pulp, which, when pressed dry and baked, forms the farinha, the principal article of sustenance in the Brazils. The whole circumstance has lately been doubted in England; I was therefore fortunate in being present when one (Desmodus d'orbignyi, Wat.) Interest, and not any feeling of compassion, prevented this act.

Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men. The chief produce of this part of the country is coffee. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit. was actually caught on a horse's back.

Senhor Figuireda told me that he had planted, the year before, one bag of feijao or beans, and three of rice; the former of which produced eighty, and the latter three hundred and twenty fold. Owing to a quarrel and a lawsuit, the owner was on the point of taking all the women and children from the male slaves, and selling them separately at the public auction at Rio.


It was well that, having made the round of the garden, they came suddenly upon Mr. Lennox would go, and allow her to relax into thought on the events of the last quarter of an hour. I shall have to console myself with scorning my own folly. He glanced from time to time at her sad and pensive face.

“I have never thought of—you, but as a friend. Her mother came into the room before this whirl of thoughts was adjusted into anything like order. if you had but never got this fancy into your head! That is all very fine in theory, that plan of forgetting whatever is painful, but it will be somewhat difficult for me, at least, to carry it into execution.”

She wondered how her father and mother could be so forgetful, so regardless of their companion through the day, as never to mention his name. He could not end his sentence. Good-bye, Margaret—Margaret!” I want to speak to you about something very serious to us all.”

The house was shut up for the evening. I am punished. Hale went out to consult with Dixon about some winter clothing for the poor. “Margaret, don’t despise me; I have a heart, notwithstanding all this good-for-nothing way of talking.

A struggling barrister to think of matrimony!” Margaret had to shake off the recollections of what had been done and said through the day, and turn a sympathising listener to the account of how Dixon had complained that the ironing-blanket had been burnt again; and how Susan Lightfoot had been seen with artificial flowers in her bonnet, thereby giving evidence of a vain and giddy character. His visitor was a different man to what he had seen him before at the wedding-breakfast, and at dinner to-day; a lighter, cleverer, more worldly man, and, as such, dissonant to Mr. Before a quarter of an hour was over, he had fallen into a way of conversing with quiet sarcasm; speaking of life in London and life in the country, as if he were conscious of his second mocking self, and afraid of his own satire.

He was gone. “I am not so indifferent to her as she believes,” thought he to himself. How different men were to women! She forgot that he had not made them an offer.

Yet, after all, Margaret had to wait a long time in the drawing-room before her mother came down. They proceeded to the house to find Mrs. Her beautiful lip curled in a slight disdain. She showed it by brushing away viciously at Margaret’s hair, under pretence of being in a great hurry to go to Mrs.

“You should make allowances for the mortification, not only of a lover, Margaret, but of a man not given to romance in general—prudent, worldly, as some people call me—who has been carried out of his usual habits by the force of a passion—well, we will say no more of that; but in the one outlet which he has formed for the deeper and better feelings of his nature, he meets with rejection and repulse. Hale, whose whereabouts had been quite forgotten by them. I mean, can you leave it and come into my study? She sat by herself at the fire, with unlighted candles on the table behind her, thinking over the day, the happy walk, happy sketching, cheerful pleasant dinner, and the uncomfortable, miserable walk in the garden.

Hale sipped his tea in abstracted silence; Margaret had the responses all to herself. He played with some papers on the table in a nervous and confused manner, opening his lips to speak several times, but closing them again without having the courage to utter a word. “Very serious to us all.” It was like the story of the eastern king, who dipped his head into a basin of water, at the magician’s command, and ere he instantly took it out went through the experience of a lifetime.

Then she took it into her head that, after all, his lightness might be but assumed, to cover a bitterness of disappointment which would have been stamped on her own heart if she had loved and been rejected. He had not yet finished the pear, which he had delicately peeled in one long strip of silver-paper thinness, and which he was enjoying in a deliberate manner. He was almost as anxious to take his departure as she was for him to leave; but a few minutes light and careless talking, carried on at whatever effort, was a sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, or his self-respect. It seemed to touch on and call out all the points of difference which had often repelled her in him; while yet he was the pleasantest man, the most sympathising friend, the person of all others who understood her best in Harley Street.

Only let me hope. I like to think of you so; but I am sure I could never think of you as anything else. Margaret was preparing her mother’s worsted work, and rather shrinking from the thought of the long evening, and wishing bed-time were come that she might go over the events of the day again. Hale, and wish her good-bye.

Lennox’s proposal. Margaret went up to dress for the early tea, finding Dixon in a pretty temper from the interruption which a visitor had naturally occasioned on a busy day. Margaret could not answer this. Hale did not answer for a minute or two.

“I do not give up hope.” I am going to leave Helstone.” Hale, at last, in a sort of sudden desperate way, that made her start. It was such a pleasure to think of you as a friend.”

At the last moment, Henry Lennox’s real self broke through the crust. He made her take a chair by him; he stirred the fire, snuffed the candles, and sighed once or twice before he could make up his mind to say—and it came out with a jerk after all—“Margaret! No more deep blue skies or crimson and amber tints. Lennox said that he must go directly if he meant to catch the five o’clock train.

“Forgive me! Hale got up, and stood with his elbow on the chimney-piece, leaning his head on his hand, musing over something, and from time to time sighing deeply. how she could have loved him if he had but been different, with a difference which she felt, on reflection, to be one that went low—deep down. Here was she disturbed and unhappy, because her instinct had made anything but a refusal impossible; while he, not many minutes after he had met with a rejection of what ought to have been the deepest, holiest proposal of his life, could speak as if briefs, success, and all its superficial consequences of a good house, clever and agreeable society, were the sole avowed objects of his desires.

In the first place, Margaret felt guilty and ashamed of having grown so much into a woman as to be thought of in marriage; and secondly, she did not know if her father might not be displeased that she had taken upon herself to decline Mr. I have been too abrupt. “Cast me upon some naked shore, Where I may tracke Only the print of some sad wracke, If thou be there though the seas roare, I shall no gentler calm implore.” Margaret reproached herself acutely as the cause of his distress.

Margaret felt stunned, and unable to recover her self-possession enough to join in the trivial conversation that ensued between her father and Mr. The whole tone of it annoyed her. It was a relief to all three when Mr. Lennox had never had the opportunity of having any private conversation with her father after her refusal, or else that would indeed be a very serious affair.

She was grave, and little disposed to speak; full of wonder when Mr. Hale was puzzled. As a proof of it, I believe I love you more than ever—if I do not hate you—for the disdain with which you have listened to me during this last half-hour. She felt a tinge of contempt mingle itself with her pain at having refused him.

But she soon felt it was not about anything, which having only lately and suddenly occurred, could have given rise to any complicated thoughts, that her father wished to speak to her. After tea Mr. Give me the poor comfort of telling me you have never seen any one whom you could——” Again a pause. “Of course, as your feelings are so decided, and as this conversation has been so evidently unpleasant to you, it had better not be remembered.

“Is that tapestry thing of immediate consequence? Pray let us both forget that all this” (“disagreeable,” she was going to say, but stopped short) “conversation has taken place.”


The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life.

Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, careful. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men? When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.

Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow!

To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain’s shadow. Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, “to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.” So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. According to Liebig, man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs.

Confucius said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,—that is, keep comfortably warm,—and die in New England at last. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less.

How vigilant we are! The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course à la mode.

For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out.

What makes families run out? The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food.

What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do.

Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.

But why do men degenerate ever? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin?

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us,—and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without,—Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed. We know not much about them. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives?

or, what if we had been taken sick? None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary.

The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next?


My father was a drawing-master before me. I succeeded to his connection, and had every reason to feel grateful for the prospect that awaited me at my starting in life. During the few minutes that elapsed while I was taking him in, the air revived him, and he ascended the steps of the machine with my assistance. To my horror and amazement, I saw nothing between me and the beach but two little white arms which struggled for an instant above the surface of the water, and then disappeared from view.

As soon as his chattering teeth would let him speak, he smiled vacantly, and said he thought it must have been the Cramp. If we had been engaged in any exercise peculiar to my own nation I should, of course, have looked after Pesca carefully; but as foreigners are generally quite as well able to take care of themselves in the water as Englishmen, it never occurred to me that the art of swimming might merely add one more to the list of manly exercises which the Professor believed that he could learn impromptu. The long hot summer was drawing to a close; and we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, were beginning to think of the cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, and the autumn breezes on the sea-shore. Events which I have yet to relate make it necessary to mention in this place that my father had been dead some years at the period of which I am now writing; and that my sister Sarah and I were the sole survivors of a family of five children.

With the partial recovery of his animation came the return of his wonderful delusion on the subject of swimming. The evening, I remember, was still and cloudy; the London air was at its heaviest; the distant hum of the street-traffic was at its faintest; the small pulse of the life within me, and the great heart of the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison, languidly and more languidly, with the sinking sun. It was quite useless, however, to ask him for an immediate explanation. I could only conjecture, while he was dragging me in by both hands, that (knowing my habits) he had come to the cottage to make sure of meeting me that night, and that he had some news to tell of an unusually agreeable kind.

When I dived for him, the poor little man was lying quietly coiled up at the bottom, in a hollow of shingle, looking by many degrees smaller than I had ever seen him look before. I had seen him risk his limbs blindly at a fox-hunt and in a cricket-field; and soon afterwards I saw him risk his life, just as blindly, in the sea at Brighton. I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs. Little did I think then—little did I think afterwards when our pleasant holiday had drawn to an end—that the opportunity of serving me for which my grateful companion so ardently longed was soon to come; that he was eagerly to seize it on the instant; and that by so doing he was to turn the whole current of my existence into a new channel, and to alter me to myself almost past recognition.

Finding us distinguished, as a nation, by our love of athletic exercises, the little man, in the innocence of his heart, devoted himself impromptu to all our English sports and pastimes whenever he had the opportunity of joining them; firmly persuaded that he could adopt our national amusements of the field by an effort of will precisely as he had adopted our national gaiters and our national white hat. When he had thoroughly recovered himself, and had joined me on the beach, his warm Southern nature broke through all artificial English restraints in a moment. The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges of the heath; and the view of London below me had sunk into a black gulf in the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my mother’s cottage. It was the last day of July.

Without being actually a dwarf—for he was perfectly well proportioned from head to foot—Pesca was, I think, the smallest human being I ever saw out of a show-room. During the past year I had not managed my professional resources as carefully as usual; and my extravagance now limited me to the prospect of spending the autumn economically between my mother’s cottage at Hampstead and my own chambers in town. He overwhelmed me with the wildest expressions of affection—exclaimed passionately, in his exaggerated Italian way, that he would hold his life henceforth at my disposal—and declared that he should never be happy again until he had found an opportunity of proving his gratitude by rendering me some service which I might remember, on my side, to the end of my days. If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he lay under water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability never have been connected with the story which these pages will relate—I should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the woman who has lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself of all my energies, who has become the one guiding influence that now directs the purpose of my life.

All I then knew of the history of his life was, that he had once held a situation in the University of Padua; that he had left Italy for political reasons (the nature of which he uniformly declined to mention to any one); and that he had been for many years respectably established in London as a teacher of languages. Accident has made him the starting-point of the strange family story which it is the purpose of these pages to unfold. Remarkable anywhere, by his personal appearance, he was still further distinguished among the rank and file of mankind by the harmless eccentricity of his character. I had hardly rung the bell before the house door was opened violently; my worthy Italian friend, Professor Pesca, appeared in the servant’s place; and darted out joyously to receive me, with a shrill foreign parody on an English cheer.

I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestations by persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject for a joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening Pesca’s overwhelming sense of obligation to me. Thanks to his admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and sister were left, after his death, as independent of the world as they had been during his lifetime. Soon after we had both struck out from shore, I stopped, finding my friend did not gain on me, and turned round to look for him. Yet so it was.

The ruling idea of his life appeared to be, that he was bound to show his gratitude to the country which had afforded him an asylum and a means of subsistence by doing his utmost to turn himself into an Englishman. For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of health, out of spirits, and, if the truth must be told, out of money as well. So I turned my steps northward in the direction of Hampstead. We had met there accidentally, and were bathing together.

His exertions had made him highly successful in his profession; and his affectionate anxiety to provide for the future of those who were dependent on his labours had impelled him, from the time of his marriage, to devote to the insuring of his life a much larger portion of his income than most men consider it necessary to set aside for that purpose. I had first become acquainted with my Italian friend by meeting him at certain great houses where he taught his own language and I taught drawing. Pesca’s face and manner, on the evening when we confronted each other at my mother’s gate, were more than sufficient to inform me that something extraordinary had happened. On his own account, and, I must be allowed to add, on mine also, the Professor merits the honour of a formal introduction.

Not content with paying the nation in general the compliment of invariably carrying an umbrella, and invariably wearing gaiters and a white hat, the Professor further aspired to become an Englishman in his habits and amusements, as well as in his personal appearance. It was one of the two evenings in every week which I was accustomed to spend with my mother and my sister.


But I felt sure of sympathy from Mr. Bell, Margaret?” As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of the next room came upon her ears. At any rate he has property there, which has very much increased in value since Milton has become such a large manufacturing town.

Aunt Shaw has, I know.” “To Milton-Northern,” he answered, with a dull indifference, for he had perceived that, although his daughter’s love had made her cling to him, and for a moment strive to soothe him with her love, yet the keenness of the pain was as fresh as ever in her mind. Besides, in a country parish I should be so painfully reminded of Helstone, and my duties here. It was very well they did—to judge from the fragments of conversation which Margaret overheard.

Grey, the gentleman who always took the bottom of the table at Mrs. “A private tutor!” Margaret was nearly upset again into a burst of crying. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at being separated for an indefinite time from her gentle aunt and dear cousin.

She contented herself by leaning back in her chair, merely playing with the food on her plate, and looking grave and absent; while all around her were enjoying the mots of Mr. To turn her thoughts, she said: “Now tell me, papa, what our plans are. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin’s beauty. These ladies and their husbands were invited in their capacity of friends, to eat a farewell dinner in honour of Edith’s approaching marriage.

I thought you and mamma had”—and then she stopped, checking her natural interest regarding their future life, as she saw the gathering gloom on her father’s brow. If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her. “No; I never saw him, I think. “I cannot stand objections.

They were the familiar acquaintances of the house; neighbours whom Mrs. And a hundred a year would go a very little way, after the necessary wants of housekeeping are met, towards providing your mother with all the comforts she has been accustomed to, and ought to have. Bell—you remember Mr. Hale shook his head despondingly: he pressed her hand in token of gratitude.

Could not you, and I, and mamma live on a hundred a year in some very cheap—very quiet part of England? “It is a painful thing, but it must be done, and I will do it as well as ever I can. He is a Fellow of Plymouth College there. Grey was particularly agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentlemen staid downstairs longer than usual.

“Where are we to go to?” That is settled. He is a native of Milton-Northern, I believe. I am going out for the day, to bid farmer Dobson and the poor people on Bracy Common good-bye.

I suppose we have about a hundred and twenty pounds a year of our own. Her aunt Shaw was talking to the five or six ladies who had been dining there, and whose husbands were still in the dining-room. I think I could do anything but that: the idea of her distress turns me sick with dread. Only help me to tell your mother.

I can always decide better by myself, and not influenced by those whom I love,” said he, as a half apology for having arranged so much before he had told any one of his family of his intentions. If I tell you all, perhaps you could break it to her to-morrow. They had grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed. Edith had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox was expected to arrive by a late train this very evening; but, although she was a spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will of her own, and gave way when she found that her mother had absolutely ordered those extra delicacies of the season which are always supposed to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell dinners.

I don’t know that he gave me much strength. But I know who he is. You must have many painful things to do.” They make me so undecided.”

But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. “You shall be told all, Margaret. Well; I had reason to suspect—to imagine—I had better say nothing about it, however. But he, with his quick intuitive sympathy, read in her face, as in a mirror, the reflections of his own moody depression, and turned it off with an effort.

“That would not answer. But he has been as kind as can be. No: we must go to Milton. said she at last, struck with a fresh wonder as to their future plans, if plans indeed her father had.

“He must have some pay for serving with the Spanish army.” Margaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of some of the plans and visions which she entertained as to her future life in the country parsonage, where her father and mother lived; and where her bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years her aunt Shaw’s house had been considered as her home. I think we could.” Because I know no one there, and no one knows Helstone, or can ever talk to me about it.”

Seventy of that has always gone to Frederick, since he has been abroad. Hale continued: “A few months ago, when my misery of doubt became more than I could bear without speaking, I wrote to Mr. You and mamma have some money, independent of the income from the living, have you not? But in default of a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life silently as heretofore.

“Because there I can earn bread for my family. A hundred is left. said Margaret, looking scornful: “What in the world do manufacturers want with the classics, or literature, or the accomplishments of a gentleman?” “Bread for your family!

She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. They had been talking about wedding dresses and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap. Would you dislike breaking it to her very much, Margaret?” He has lived an easy life in his college all his days.

Margaret resolved to keep silence. “Frederick must not suffer,” said Margaret, decidedly; “in a foreign country; so unjustly treated by his own. “Why he has tenants, and houses, and mills there; so, though he dislikes the place—too bustling for one of his habits—he is obliged to keep up some sort of connection; and he tells me that he hears there is a good opening for a private tutor there.” I could not bear it, Margaret.

Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine with them more frequently than with any other people, and because if she or Edith wanted anything from them, or they from her, they did not scruple to make a call at each other’s houses before luncheon. I must do something! And it is owing to him we are going to Milton.” Shaw’s dinner parties, and asked Edith to give them some music in the drawing-room.

I don’t know if he wants it all,” he continued in a hesitating manner. Frederick’s godfather—your old tutor at Oxford, don’t you mean?” I must make myself busy, to keep off morbid thoughts. After all, what did it signify where they went, compared to the one terrible change?


After all, what did it signify where they went, compared to the one terrible change? “Why he has tenants, and houses, and mills there; so, though he dislikes the place—too bustling for one of his habits—he is obliged to keep up some sort of connection; and he tells me that he hears there is a good opening for a private tutor there.” But he, with his quick intuitive sympathy, read in her face, as in a mirror, the reflections of his own moody depression, and turned it off with an effort. You and mamma have some money, independent of the income from the living, have you not?

He is a native of Milton-Northern, I believe. Bell, Margaret?” But I know who he is. At any rate he has property there, which has very much increased in value since Milton has become such a large manufacturing town.

Of course, without any maternal partiality, I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry early; indeed, I had often said that I was sure she would be married before she was nineteen. She contented herself by leaning back in her chair, merely playing with the food on her plate, and looking grave and absent; while all around her were enjoying the mots of Mr. These ladies and their husbands were invited in their capacity of friends, to eat a farewell dinner in honour of Edith’s approaching marriage. A hundred is left.

It was very well they did—to judge from the fragments of conversation which Margaret overheard. I can always decide better by myself, and not influenced by those whom I love,” said he, as a half apology for having arranged so much before he had told any one of his family of his intentions. “No; I never saw him, I think. He has lived an easy life in his college all his days.

Bell—you remember Mr. He is a Fellow of Plymouth College there. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin’s beauty. I suppose we have about a hundred and twenty pounds a year of our own.

Hale continued: “A few months ago, when my misery of doubt became more than I could bear without speaking, I wrote to Mr. Besides, in a country parish I should be so painfully reminded of Helstone, and my duties here. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine with them more frequently than with any other people, and because if she or Edith wanted anything from them, or they from her, they did not scruple to make a call at each other’s houses before luncheon. And a hundred a year would go a very little way, after the necessary wants of housekeeping are met, towards providing your mother with all the comforts she has been accustomed to, and ought to have.

Only help me to tell your mother. If I tell you all, perhaps you could break it to her to-morrow. Edith had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox was expected to arrive by a late train this very evening; but, although she was a spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will of her own, and gave way when she found that her mother had absolutely ordered those extra delicacies of the season which are always supposed to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell dinners. That is settled.

I don’t know that he gave me much strength. “You shall be told all, Margaret. Aunt Shaw has, I know.” You must have many painful things to do.”

But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. They make me so undecided.” And it is owing to him we are going to Milton.” I had quite prophetic feeling when Captain Lennox”—and here the voice dropped into a whisper, but Margaret could easily supply the blank.

I am going out for the day, to bid farmer Dobson and the poor people on Bracy Common good-bye. But I felt sure of sympathy from Mr. “It is a painful thing, but it must be done, and I will do it as well as ever I can. Hale shook his head despondingly: he pressed her hand in token of gratitude.

But in default of a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life silently as heretofore. She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. Would you dislike breaking it to her very much, Margaret?” Margaret was nearly upset again into a burst of crying.

I must do something! The course of true love in Edith’s case had run remarkably smooth. I think we could.” “That would not answer.

Margaret resolved to keep silence. Could not you, and I, and mamma live on a hundred a year in some very cheap—very quiet part of England? Well; I had reason to suspect—to imagine—I had better say nothing about it, however. But he has been as kind as can be.

As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of the next room came upon her ears. They had grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed. said Margaret, looking scornful: “What in the world do manufacturers want with the classics, or literature, or the accomplishments of a gentleman?” “He must have some pay for serving with the Spanish army.”

Her aunt Shaw was talking to the five or six ladies who had been dining there, and whose husbands were still in the dining-room. Grey, the gentleman who always took the bottom of the table at Mrs. No: we must go to Milton. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at being separated for an indefinite time from her gentle aunt and dear cousin.

If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her. Grey was particularly agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentlemen staid downstairs longer than usual. Margaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of some of the plans and visions which she entertained as to her future life in the country parsonage, where her father and mother lived; and where her bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years her aunt Shaw’s house had been considered as her home. Shaw’s dinner parties, and asked Edith to give them some music in the drawing-room.

To turn her thoughts, she said: “Now tell me, papa, what our plans are. Frederick’s godfather—your old tutor at Oxford, don’t you mean?” “I cannot stand objections. “A private tutor!”

I could not bear it, Margaret. Shaw had given way to the presentiment, as she expressed it; and had rather urged on the marriage, although it was below the expectations which many of Edith’s acquaintances had formed for her, a young and pretty heiress. They were the familiar acquaintances of the house; neighbours whom Mrs. I think I could do anything but that: the idea of her distress turns me sick with dread.

I don’t know if he wants it all,” he continued in a hesitating manner. They had been talking about wedding dresses and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap. I must make myself busy, to keep off morbid thoughts. “Frederick must not suffer,” said Margaret, decidedly; “in a foreign country; so unjustly treated by his own.

Seventy of that has always gone to Frederick, since he has been abroad. “I suffered too much myself; not that I was not extremely happy with the poor dear General, but still disparity of age is a drawback; one that I was resolved Edith should not have to encounter.


I think we could.” I thought you and mamma had”—and then she stopped, checking her natural interest regarding their future life, as she saw the gathering gloom on her father’s brow. They had grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed. You and mamma have some money, independent of the income from the living, have you not?

I must do something! “Bread for your family! Edith had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox was expected to arrive by a late train this very evening; but, although she was a spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will of her own, and gave way when she found that her mother had absolutely ordered those extra delicacies of the season which are always supposed to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell dinners. But I felt sure of sympathy from Mr.

“You shall be told all, Margaret. I am going out for the day, to bid farmer Dobson and the poor people on Bracy Common good-bye. Shaw’s dinner parties, and asked Edith to give them some music in the drawing-room. But I know who he is.

I must make myself busy, to keep off morbid thoughts. Margaret resolved to keep silence. I can always decide better by myself, and not influenced by those whom I love,” said he, as a half apology for having arranged so much before he had told any one of his family of his intentions. And a hundred a year would go a very little way, after the necessary wants of housekeeping are met, towards providing your mother with all the comforts she has been accustomed to, and ought to have.

Frederick’s godfather—your old tutor at Oxford, don’t you mean?” You must have many painful things to do.” He has lived an easy life in his college all his days. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine with them more frequently than with any other people, and because if she or Edith wanted anything from them, or they from her, they did not scruple to make a call at each other’s houses before luncheon.

But he, with his quick intuitive sympathy, read in her face, as in a mirror, the reflections of his own moody depression, and turned it off with an effort. said Margaret, looking scornful: “What in the world do manufacturers want with the classics, or literature, or the accomplishments of a gentleman?” Could not you, and I, and mamma live on a hundred a year in some very cheap—very quiet part of England? They make me so undecided.”

“No; I never saw him, I think. Hale continued: “A few months ago, when my misery of doubt became more than I could bear without speaking, I wrote to Mr. Her aunt Shaw was talking to the five or six ladies who had been dining there, and whose husbands were still in the dining-room. He is a native of Milton-Northern, I believe.

Would you dislike breaking it to her very much, Margaret?” And it is owing to him we are going to Milton.” She contented herself by leaning back in her chair, merely playing with the food on her plate, and looking grave and absent; while all around her were enjoying the mots of Mr. I don’t know if he wants it all,” he continued in a hesitating manner.

Of course, without any maternal partiality, I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry early; indeed, I had often said that I was sure she would be married before she was nineteen. “He must have some pay for serving with the Spanish army.” “A private tutor!” That is settled.

“Why he has tenants, and houses, and mills there; so, though he dislikes the place—too bustling for one of his habits—he is obliged to keep up some sort of connection; and he tells me that he hears there is a good opening for a private tutor there.” Grey, the gentleman who always took the bottom of the table at Mrs. Only help me to tell your mother. But he has been as kind as can be.

Bell—you remember Mr. Margaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of some of the plans and visions which she entertained as to her future life in the country parsonage, where her father and mother lived; and where her bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years her aunt Shaw’s house had been considered as her home. At any rate he has property there, which has very much increased in value since Milton has become such a large manufacturing town. Aunt Shaw has, I know.”

If I tell you all, perhaps you could break it to her to-morrow. Seventy of that has always gone to Frederick, since he has been abroad. Grey was particularly agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentlemen staid downstairs longer than usual. I could not bear it, Margaret.

He is a Fellow of Plymouth College there. Margaret was nearly upset again into a burst of crying. I had quite prophetic feeling when Captain Lennox”—and here the voice dropped into a whisper, but Margaret could easily supply the blank. But in default of a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life silently as heretofore.

After all, what did it signify where they went, compared to the one terrible change? Hale shook his head despondingly: he pressed her hand in token of gratitude. Bell, Margaret?” I think I could do anything but that: the idea of her distress turns me sick with dread.

If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken for her. A hundred is left. “That would not answer. “Frederick must not suffer,” said Margaret, decidedly; “in a foreign country; so unjustly treated by his own.

It was very well they did—to judge from the fragments of conversation which Margaret overheard. No: we must go to Milton. “I suffered too much myself; not that I was not extremely happy with the poor dear General, but still disparity of age is a drawback; one that I was resolved Edith should not have to encounter. As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of the next room came upon her ears.

Well; I had reason to suspect—to imagine—I had better say nothing about it, however. I don’t know that he gave me much strength. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at being separated for an indefinite time from her gentle aunt and dear cousin. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin’s beauty.

To turn her thoughts, she said: “Now tell me, papa, what our plans are. “It is a painful thing, but it must be done, and I will do it as well as ever I can. They had been talking about wedding dresses and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap. They were the familiar acquaintances of the house; neighbours whom Mrs.

She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. I suppose we have about a hundred and twenty pounds a year of our own. These ladies and their husbands were invited in their capacity of friends, to eat a farewell dinner in honour of Edith’s approaching marriage. “I cannot stand objections.

Besides, in a country parish I should be so painfully reminded of Helstone, and my duties here. But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep.


I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside.

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal.

We belong to the community. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. At six I passed him and his family on the road. No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland path.

It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The hens were driven in by my approach. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said.

He was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods of Troy. I lived there two years and two months. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day.

Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. In her own words, they were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window,”—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature.

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men?

"I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up." No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. It was but two hours’ work. One large bundle held their all,—bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens,—all but the cat, she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way.

Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. and what object does it finally serve? The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned. I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun.

She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. Where is this division of labor to end? In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.


Her mouth was wide; no rosebud that could only open just enough to let out a “yes” and “no,” and “an’t please you, sir.” Coach-building is a trade all the same, and I think a much more useless one than that of butchers or bakers. I wish I knew all about it. Immediately after tea her father withdrew into his small library, and she and her mother were left alone.

I’m sure you don’t want me to admire butchers and bakers, and candlestick-makers, do you, mamma?” It was the latter part of July when Margaret returned home. if Frederick had but been a clergyman, instead of going into the navy, and being lost to us all! Margaret was painfully struck by the worn, anxious expression; and she went back over the open and avowed circumstances of her father’s life, to find the cause for the lines that spoke so plainly of habitual distress and depression.

She was so happy out of doors, at her father’s side, that she almost danced; and with the soft violence of the west wind behind her, as she crossed some heath, she seemed to be borne onwards, as lightly and easily as the fallen leaf that was wafted along by the autumnal breeze. She knew, and had rather revelled in the idea, that she should have to give up many luxuries, which had only been troubles and trammels to her freedom in Harley Street. This did good for a time; but when the autumn drew on, and the weather became more changeable, her mother’s idea of the unhealthiness of the place increased; and she repined even more frequently that her husband, who was more learned than Mr. “You must not be so fastidious, Margaret, dear!”

This marring of the peace of home, by long hours of discontent, was what Margaret was unprepared for. Her keen enjoyment of every sensuous pleasure was balanced finely, if not overbalanced, by her conscious pride in being able to do without them all, if need were. His face returned into its lines of habitual anxiety. Hume, a better parish priest than Mr.

Margaret was more like him than like her mother. She was ready with a bright smile, in which there was not a trace of fatigue, to greet her father when he awakened. I never understood it from Aunt Shaw; I only knew he could not come back to England because of that terrible affair. how tired I used to be of the drives every day in Aunt Shaw’s carriage, and how I longed to walk!”

“Poor Frederick!” At each repeated urgency of his wife, that he would put himself in the way of seeking some preferment, Margaret saw that her father shrank more and more; and she strove at such times to reconcile her mother to Helstone. He would sigh aloud as he answered, that if he could do what he ought in little Helstone, he should be thankful; but every day he was more overpowered; the world became more bewildering. Houldsworth, should not have met with the preferment that these two former neighbours of theirs had done.

She made hearty friends with them; learned and delighted in using their peculiar words; took up her freedom amongst them; nursed their babies; talked or read with slow distinctness to their old people; carried dainty messes to their sick; resolved before long to teach at the school where her father went regularly every day as to an appointed task, but she was continually tempted off to go and see some individual friend—man, woman, or child—in some cottage in the green shade of the forest. I call mine a very comprehensive taste; I like all people whose occupations have to do with land; I like soldiers and sailors, and the three learned professions, as they call them. But the evenings were rather difficult to fill up agreeably. In the latter half of September, the autumnal rains and storms came on, and Margaret was obliged to remain more in the house than she had hitherto done.

Gormon whom she had once met at Mr. If we only lived at the other side of the parish, it would be something; there we should be almost within walking distance of the Stansfields; certainly the Gormons would be within a walk.” But he had the same large, soft eyes as his daughter,—eyes which moved slowly and almost grandly round in their orbits, and were well veiled by their transparent white eyelids. how sad he looks!

The forest trees were all one dark, full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and broodingly still. said her mother, secretly thinking of a young and handsome Mr. Her out-of-doors life was perfect. He smiled back again, but faintly, as if it were an unusual exertion.

This life—at least these walks—realised all Margaret’s anticipations. But the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it. Its people were her people. He had a trick of half-opening his mouth as if to speak, which constantly unsettled the form of the lips, and gave the face an undecided expression.

“But the Gormons were neither butchers nor bakers, but very respectable coach-builders.” Poor dear papa! Helstone was at some distance from any neighbours of their own standard of cultivation. Margaret used to tramp along by her father’s side, crushing down the fern with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her light foot, and send up the fragrance peculiar to it—out on the broad commons into the warm scented light, seeing multitudes of wild, free, living creatures, revelling in the sunshine, and the herbs and flowers it called forth.

Hale, in one of her plaintive moods. Sometimes people wondered that parents so handsome should have a daughter who was so far regularly beautiful; not beautiful at all, was occasionally said. thought she, sighing. The face was in repose; but it was rather rest after weariness than the serene calm of the countenance of one who led a placid, contented life.

I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence.” Hale said that the near neighbourhood of so many trees affected her health; and Margaret would try to tempt her forth on to the beautiful, broad, upland, sun-streaked, cloud-shadowed common; for she was sure that her mother had accustomed herself too much to an in-doors life, seldom extending her walks beyond the church, the school, and the neighbouring cottages. She took a pride in her forest. But the wide mouth was one soft curve of rich red lips; and the skin, if not white and fair, was of an ivory smoothness and delicacy.

“It is undoubtedly one of the most out-of-the-way places in England,” said Mrs. “Gormons,” said Margaret, “Are those the Gormons who made their fortunes in trade at Southampton? If the look on her face was, in general, too dignified and reserved for one so young, now, talking to her father, it was bright as the morning,—full of dimples, and glances that spoke of childish gladness, and boundless hope in the future. Her mother—her mother always so kind and tender towards her—seemed now and then so much discontented with their situation; thought that the bishop strangely neglected his episcopal duties, in not giving Mr.

“I can’t help regretting constantly that papa has really no one to associate with here; he is so thrown away; seeing no one but farmers and labourers from week’s end to week’s end. With the healthy shame of a child, she blamed herself for her keenness of sight in perceiving that all was not as it should be there. And walk Margaret did, in spite of the weather. I don’t like shoppy people.

Her in-doors life had its drawbacks. There had been slight complaints and passing regrets on her mother’s part, over some trifle connected with Helstone, and her father’s position there, when Margaret had been spending her holidays at home before; but in the general happiness of the recollection of those times, she had forgotten the small details which were not so pleasant. I am so glad I am going home, to be at hand to comfort him and mamma.” I’m glad we don’t visit them.

Hale a better living; and almost reproached her husband because he could not bring himself to say that he wished to leave the parish, and undertake the charge of a larger.


Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. How godlike, how immortal, is he? From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.

His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! There is no play in them, for this comes after work. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, “be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?” Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

This was not the light in which I hoed them. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer.

If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. According to Evelyn, “the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor’s land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor.” He has no time to be anything but a machine. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear.

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles!

What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? It is never too late to give up our prejudices. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Talk of a divinity in man! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions.

If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates!

Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can.

Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination,—what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins æs alienum, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it.