Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860

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[Footnote *: In May, 1789, the Spanish sloop-of-war Princesa seized
four English vessels engaged in a trade with the natives of Vancouver's
Island, and took them into a Mexican port as prizes, on the ground that
they had violated the Spanish Colonial laws. The English government
denied the claim of Spain to those distant regions, and insisted upon
ample satisfaction. The King of Spain was obliged to submit to avoid
war, but the question of territory was left open.]

After the disastrous affair of Neerwinden, Miranda was accused of
misconduct, arrested, and sent to Paris for trial, but was acquitted by
the _Tribunal Revolutionnaire_, and conducted home in triumph. He was
again imprisoned for _incivisme_, during the Reign of Terror, and did
not recover his liberty until the general jail-delivery which followed
the death of Robespierre. He was seized for the third time in 1797, by
the Directory, as an adherent of the Pichegru faction, and banished
from France.

In January, 1798, Mr. Pitt again sent for Miranda, and a new plan was
arranged for the emancipation of South America. On this occasion, the
cooeperation of the United States was confidently relied upon. Both Pitt
and our own rulers foresaw that Spain must inevitably fall a prey to
France, and that the whole of her American possessions would probably
share her fate. Our relations with France were in so critical a
condition, that we were making preparations for defence; and it was, of
course, of the highest importance to our safety, that the Floridas and
Louisiana should not fall into the hands of a powerful enemy. It was
proposed, consequently, to form a commercial and defensive alliance
between England, the United States, and South America. We were to get
the Floridas and Louisiana to the Mississippi, and in return to furnish
a land-force of ten thousand men. Great Britain would provide the
fleet, in consideration of certain important advantages in trade.
Miranda kept his friends in the United States fully advised of the
progress of affairs. Hamilton and Knox were in favor of the project,
provided war were declared. Our provisional army might then have played
a brilliant part. But there was no war. President Adams refused to
listen to Miranda's communications, and patched up our difficulties
with France. Nothing was done by the English.

In 1801 Lord Sidmouth revived Miranda's hopes, but the Peace of Amiens
put a stop to the preparations. In 1804 Mr. Pitt was again at the head
of affairs, and renewed his intercourse with Miranda. Orders were given
to prepare ships and to enrol men, when the hopes of the third
coalition again suspended the execution of the project.

It was after this last blow from Fortune that Miranda came to New York
and fitted out the expedition we have undertaken to describe. His
disastrous failure seemed neither to destroy his hopes, nor to shake
the confidence of his English friends in his pretensions. When he
returned to England from Trinidad, he found ministers prepared to
embark with energy in the South American scheme. This time a fleet and
an army were really assembled at Cork, and Sir Arthur Wellesley was to
command them,--when the Spanish Revolution broke out, altered at once
the face of affairs in Europe, and turned Sir Arthur and his army
toward Portugal, to begin that brilliant series of campaigns which
drove the French out of the Peninsula.

Few men fix their minds pertinaciously upon an object, and adhere to
the pursuit through life, without at least a partial attainment of it.
Miranda, the victim of so many bitter disappointments, at last found
himself for a few months in the position he had so often dreamed of.
When the news of the fall of Seville, and of the dispersion of the
Junta who governed in the name of Ferdinand VII., reached South
America, open rebellion broke out at Caracas. King Joseph Bonaparte had
sent over a proclamation, imploring his trusty and well-beloved South
Americans to come to his paternal arms,--or, if they would not do that,
at least to set up a government for themselves, and not take part with
Ferdinand and England. His emissaries were hunted down and hanged,
wherever caught. Revolutionary Juntas were established all over the
country. On the 19th of April, 1810, the American Confederation of
Venezuela, in Congress assembled, undertook to rule in the name of
Ferdinand VII., but in reality as an independent government. Miranda
was called to the command of the native army. On the 5th of July, 1811,
the Congress published their Declaration of Independence, and a
Constitution, both of them remarkable state-papers. In point of
liberality of sentiment and elegance of style they will bear comparison
with our own celebrated documents of '76 and '87. Indeed, in all these
Spanish political plays, the plot has been good, the text admirable,
but the actors so poor as to spoil the piece. So it fell out in
Venezuela. At first the Patriots were successful; Miranda defeated the
Royalists and took Valencia. The principal towns fell into the hands of
the insurgents. Then, came the terrible earthquake of 1812, which not
only shattered the resources of the Patriots, but was skilfully used by
the Church as a proof that Providence had taken sides against the
rebels. Monteverde, the Spanish general, recaptured Valencia. Congress
placed the dictatorship with unlimited power in Miranda's hands, but he
was not the man for desperate situations. On the 6th of July, the
Royalists took Puerto Cabello; Caracas fell on the 28th; and Miranda,
betrayed by his own party into the hands of the Spaniards, was sent a
prisoner to Cadiz in October. Simon Bolivar and others, men of
different mettle, regained all that had been lost, and cut loose the
Colonies from Spain. From California to Cape Horn the inestimable
system of self-government was established. According to the theory, the
South Americans should have been prosperous and happy; but,
unfortunately, the result has been murder, robbery, and general ruin.
The burden of taking care of one's self, which the North American had
the strength to bear, has crushed the poor half-caste Spaniard. There
are persons who assert that a political regimen which agrees so well
with us must therefore be good for all others. It may be instructive to
such believers in system to compare Humboldt's narrative of the
cultivation shown by the great Colonial Universities of Mexico, Quito,
and Lima, of the pleasing Creole society that entertained him, and the
peaceful quiet and security he noticed throughout country, with the
relations of modern travellers or newspaper-correspondents who visit
those semi-barbarous regions.

Don Francisco de Miranda did not live to hear of the freedom of his
"Columbia." Before the close of the year 1812 he died in prison, at
Cadiz. Thus perished the most gentlemanlike of filibusters, since the
days when Jason sailed in the Argo to extend the blessing of Greek
institutions over Colchis and to appropriate the Golden Fleece.

* * * * *

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MORNING AFTER.

Colonel Sprowle's family arose late the next morning. The fatigues and
excitements of the evening and the preparation for it were followed by
a natural collapse, of which somnolence was a leading symptom. The sun
shone into the window at a pretty well opened angle when the Colonel
first found himself sufficiently awake to address his yet slumbering
spouse.

"Sally!" said the Colonel, in a voice that was a little husky,--for he
had finished off the evening with an extra glass or two of "Madary,"
and had a somewhat rusty and headachy sense of renewed existence, on
greeting the rather advanced dawn,--"Sally!"

"Take care o' them custard-cups! There they go!"

Poor Mrs. Sprowle was fighting the party over in her dream; and as the
visionary custard-cups crashed down through one lobe of her brain into
another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning from a quart
Leyden jar had jumped into one of her knuckles with its sudden and
lively _poonk_!

"Sally!" said the Colonel,--"wake up, wake up! What 'r' y' dreamin'
abaout?"

Mrs. Sprowle raised herself, by a sort of spasm, _sur son seant_, as
they say in France,--up on end, as we have it in New England. She
looked first to the left, then to the right, then straight before her,
apparently without seeing anything, and at last slowly settled down,
with her two eyes, blank of any particular meaning, directed upon the
Colonel.

"What time is't?" she said.

"Ten o'clock. What 'y' been dreamin' abaout? Y' giv a jump like a
hoppergrass. Wake up, wake up! Th' party's over, and y' been asleep all
the mornin'. The party's over, I tell ye! Wake up!"

"Over!" said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to define her position at
last,--"over! I should think 'twas time 'twas over! It's lasted a
hundud year. I've been workin' for that party longer 'n Methuselah's
lifetime, sence I been asleep. The pies wouldn' bake, and the blo'monge
wouldn' set, and the ice-cream wouldn' freeze, and all the folks kep'
comin' 'n' comin' 'n' comin',--everybody I ever knew in all my
life,--some of 'em's been dead this twenty year 'n' more,--'n' nothin'
for 'em to eat nor drink. The fire wouldn' burn to cook anything, all
we could do. We blowed with the belluses, 'n' we stuffed in paper 'n'
pitch-pine kindlin's, but nothin' could make that fire burn; 'n' all
the time the folks kep' comin', as if they'd never stop,--'n' nothin'
for 'em but empty dishes, 'n' all the borrowed chaney slippin' round on
the waiters 'n' chippin' 'n' crackin'. I wouldn' go through what I been
through t'-night for all th' money in th' Bank,--I do believe it's
harder t' have a party than t'"----

Mrs. Sprowle stated the case strongly.

The Colonel said he didn't know how that might be. She was a better
judge than he was. It was bother enough, anyhow, and he was glad that
it was over. After this, the worthy pair commenced preparations for
rejoining the waking world, and in due time proceeded down-stairs.

Everybody was late that morning, and nothing had got put to rights. The
house looked as if a small army had been quartered in it over night.
The tables were of course in huge disorder, after the protracted
assault they had undergone. There had been a great battle evidently,
and it had gone against the provisions. Some points had been stormed,
and all their defences annihilated, but here and there were centres of
resistance which had held out against all attacks,--large rounds of
beef, and solid loaves of cake, against which the inexperienced had
wasted their energies in the enthusiasm of youth or uninformed
maturity, while the longer-headed guests were making discoveries of
"shell-oysters" and "patridges" and similar delicacies.

The breakfast was naturally of a somewhat fragmentary character. A
chicken that had lost his legs in the service of the preceding campaign
was once more put on duty. A great ham stuck with cloves, as Saint
Sebastian was with arrows, was again offered for martyrdom. It would
have been a pleasant sight for a medical man of a speculative turn to
have seen the prospect before the Colonel's family of the next week's
breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. The trail that one of these great
rural parties leaves after it is one of its most formidable
considerations. Every door-handle in the house is suggestive of
sweetmeats for the next week, at least. The most unnatural articles of
diet displace the frugal but nutritious food of unconvulsed periods of
existence. If there is a walking infant about the house, it will
certainly have a more or less fatal fit from overmuch of some
indigestible delicacy. Before the week is out, everybody will be tired
to death of sugary forms of nourishment and long to see the last of the
remnants of the festival.

The family had not yet arrived at this condition. On the contrary, the
first inspection of the tables suggested the prospect of days of
unstinted luxury; and the younger portion of the household, especially,
were in a state of great excitement as the account of stock was taken
with reference to future internal investments, Some curious facts came
to light during these researches.

"Where's all the oranges gone to?" said Mrs. Sprowle. "I expected
there'd be ever so many of 'em left. I didn't see many of the folks
eatin' oranges. Where's the skins of 'em? There ought to be six dozen
orange-skins round on the plates, and there a'n't one dozen. And all
the small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the
big cakes.--Has anybody counted the spoons? Some of 'em got swallered,
perhaps. I hope they was plated ones, if they did!"

The failure of the morning's orange-crop and the deficit in other
expected residual delicacies were not very difficult to account for. In
many of the two-story Rockland families, and in those favored
households of the neighboring villages whose members had been invited
to the great party, there was a very general excitement among the
younger people on the morning after the great event. "Did y' bring home
somethin' from the party? What is it? What is it? Is it frut-cake? Is
it nuts and oranges and apples? Give me some! Give _me_ some!" Such a
concert of treble voices uttering accents like these had not been heard
since the great Temperance Festival with the celebrated "colation" in
the open air under the trees of the Parnassian Grove,--as the place was
christened by the young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the
children was not in vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the
bags of sharp-eyed spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of
light-fingered sisters, from the tall hats of sly-winking brothers,
there was a resurrection of the missing oranges and cakes and
sugar-things in many a rejoicing family-circle, enough to astonish the
most hardened "caterer" that ever contracted to feed a thousand people
under canvas.

The tender recollection of those dear little ones whom extreme youth or
other pressing considerations detain from scenes of festivity--a trait
of affection by no means uncommon among our thoughtful people
--dignifies those social meetings where it is manifested, and
sheds a ray of sunshine on our common nature. It is "an oasis in the
desert,"--to use the striking expression of the last year's
"Valedictorian" of the Apollinean Institute. In the midst of so much
that is purely selfish, it is delightful to meet such disinterested
care for others. When a large family of children are expecting a
parent's return from an entertainment, it will often require great
exertions on his part to provide himself so as to meet their reasonable
expectations. A few rules are worth remembering by all who attend
anniversary dinners in Faneuil Hall or elsewhere. Thus: Lobsters' claws
are always acceptable to children of all ages. Oranges and apples are
to be taken _one at a time_, until the coat-pockets begin to become
inconveniently heavy. Cakes are injured by sitting upon them; it is,
therefore, well to carry a stout tin box of a size to hold as many
pieces as there are children in the domestic circle. A very pleasant
amusement, at the close of one of these banquets, is grabbing for the
flowers with which the table is embellished. These will please the
ladies at home very greatly, and, if the children are at the same time
abundantly supplied with fruits, nuts, cakes, and any little ornamental
articles of confectionery which are of a nature to be unostentatiously
removed, the kind-hearted parent will make a whole household happy,
without any additional expense beyond the outlay for his ticket.

There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, of one kind and another,
at any rate, to make all the Colonel's family uncomfortable for the
next week. It bid fair to take as long to get rid of the remains of the
great party as it had taken to make ready for it.

In the mean time Mr. Bernard had been dreaming, as young men dream, of
gliding shapes with bright eyes and burning cheeks, strangely blended
with red planets and hissing meteors, and, shining over all, the white,
unwandering star of the North, girt with its tethered constellations.

After breakfast he walked into the parlor, where he found Miss Darley.
She was alone, and, holding a school-book in her hand, was at work with
one of the morning's lessons. She hardly noticed him as he entered,
being very busy with her book,--and he paused a moment before speaking,
and looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would not have been
strictly true to call her beautiful. For years,--since her earliest
womanhood,--those slender hands had taken the bread which repaid the
toil of heart and brain from the coarse palms that offered it in the
world's rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered
away the life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of
school-rooms, that she had forced her intelligence to posture before
her will, as the exigencies of her place required,--waking to mental
labor,--sleeping to dream of problems,--rolling up the stone of
education for an endless twelvemonth's term, to find it at the bottom
of the hill again when another year called her to its renewed
duties,--schooling her temper in unending inward and outward conflicts,
until neither dulness nor obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could
reach her serene self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly as her
prodigal labors were repaid in proportion to the waste of life they
cost, her value was too well established to leave her without what,
under other circumstances, would have been a more than sufficient
compensation. But there were others who looked to her in their need,
and so the modest fountain which might have been filled to its brim was
continually drained through silent-flowing, hidden sluices.

Out of such a life, inherited from a race which had lived in conditions
not unlike her own, _beauty_, in the common sense of the term, could
hardly find leisure to develop and shape itself. For it must be
remembered, that symmetry and elegance of features and figure, like
perfectly formed crystals in the mineral world, are reached only by
insuring a certain necessary repose to individuals and to generations.
Human beauty is an agricultural product in the country, growing up in
men and women as in corn and cattle, where the soil is good. It is a
luxury almost monopolized by the rich in cities, bred under glass like
their forced pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and country, the
evolution of the physical harmonics which make music to our eyes
requires a combination of favorable circumstances, of which
alternations of unburdened tranquillity with intervals of varied
excitement of mind and body are among the most important. Where
sufficient excitement is wanting, as often happens in the country, the
features, however rich in red and white, get heavy, and the movements
sluggish; where excitement is furnished in excess, as is frequently
the case in cities, the contours and colors are impoverished, and the
nerves begin to make their existence known to the consciousness, as the
face very soon informs us.

Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have possessed the
kind of beauty which pleases the common taste. Her eye was calm,
sad-looking, her features very still, except when her pleasant smile
changed them for a moment, all her outlines were delicate, her voice
was very gentle, but somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and
on her smooth forehead one little hinted line whispered already that
Care was beginning to mark the trace which Time sooner or later would
make a furrow. She could not be a beauty; if she had been, it would
have been much harder for many persons to be interested in her. For,
although in the abstract we all love beauty, and although, if we were
sent naked souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soul-less bodies
and told to select one to our liking, we should each choose a handsome
one, and never think of the consequences,--it is quite certain that
beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion as well as of attraction with
it, alike in both sexes. We may be well assured that there are many
persons who no more think of specializing their love of the other sex
upon one endowed with signal beauty, than they think of wanting great
diamonds or thousand-dollar horses. No man or woman can appropriate
beauty without paying for it,--in endowments, in fortune, in position,
in self-surrender, or other valuable stock; and there are a great many
who are too poor, too ordinary, too humble, too busy, too proud, to pay
any of these prices for it. So the unbeautiful get many more lovers
than the beauties; only, as there are more of them, their lovers are
spread thinner and do not make so much show.

The young master stood looking at Helen Darley with a kind of tender
admiration. She was such a picture of the martyr by the slow social
combustive process, that it almost seemed to him he could see a pale
lambent aureole round her head.

"I did not see you at the great party last evening," he said,
presently.

She looked up and answered, "No. I have not much taste for such large
companies. Besides, I do not feel as if my time belonged to me after it
has been paid for. There is always something to do, some lesson or
exercise,--and it so happened, I was very busy last night with the new
problems in geometry. I hope you had a good time."

"Very. Two or three of our girls were there. Rosa Milburn. What a
beauty she is! I wonder what she feeds on! Wine and musk and chloroform
and coals of fire, I believe; I didn't think there was such color and
flavor in a woman outside the tropics."

Miss Darley smiled rather faintly; the imagery was not just to her
taste: _femineity_ often finds it very hard to accept the fact of
_muliebrity_.

"Was"----?

She stopped short; but her question had asked itself.

"Elsie there? She was, for an hour or so. She looked frightfully
handsome. I meant to have spoken to her, but she slipped away before I
knew it."

"I thought she meant to go to the party," said Miss Darley. "Did she
look at you?"

"She did. Why?"

"And you did not speak to her?"

"No. I should have spoken to her, but she was gone when I looked for
her. A strange creature! Isn't there an odd sort of fascination about
her? You have not explained all the mystery about the girl. What does
she come to this school for? She seems to do pretty much as she likes
about studying."

Miss Darley answered in very low tones. "It was a fancy of hers to
come, and they let her have her way. I don't know what there is about
her, except that she seems to take my life out of me when she looks at
me. I don't like to ask other people about our girls. She says very
little to anybody, and studies, or makes believe study, almost what she
likes. I don't know what she is," (Miss Darley laid her hand,
trembling, on the young master's sleeve,) "but I can tell when she is
in the room without seeing or hearing her. Oh, Mr. Langdon, I am weak
and nervous, and no doubt foolish,--but--if there were women now, as
in the days of our Saviour, possessed of devils, I should think there
was something not human looking out of Elsie Venner's eyes!"

The poor girl's breast rose and fell tumultuously as she spoke, and her
voice labored, as if some obstruction were rising in her throat.

A scene might possibly have come of it, but the door opened. Mr. Silas
Peckham. Miss Darley got away as soon as she well could.

"Why did not Miss Darley go to the party last evening?" said Mr.
Bernard.

"Well, the fact is," answered Mr. Silas Peckham, "Miss Darley, she's
pootty much took up with the school. She's an industris young
woman,--yis, she _is_ industris,--but perhaps she a'n't quite so spry a
worker as some. Maybe, considerin' she's paid for her time, she isn't
fur out o' the way in occoopyin' herself evenin's,--that is, if so be
she a'n't smart enough to finish up all her work in the daytime.
Edoocation is the great business of the Institoot. Amoosements are
objec's of a secondary natur', accordin' to my v'oo." [The unspellable
pronunciation of this word is the touchstone of New England
Brahminism.]

Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nostrils dilating, as if the
air did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham
was speaking. The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself of
these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone,
wadded with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after
three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large,
white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberately, as if weighing
his words well, so that, during his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time
for a mental accompaniment with variations, accented by certain bodily
changes, which escaped Mr. Peckham's observation. First there was a
feeling of disgust and shame at hearing Helen Darley spoken of like a
dumb working animal. That sent the blood up into his cheeks. Then the
slur upon her probable want of force--_her_ incapacity, who made the
character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits--sent a
thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles
hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas
Peckham, to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over
backwards all of a sudden. This would not do, of course, and so the
thrill passed off and the muscles softened again. Then came that state
of tenderness in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which
the eyes grow moist like a woman's, and there is also a great
boiling-up of objectionable terms out of the deep-water vocabulary, so
that Prudence and Propriety and all the other pious Ps have to jump
upon the lid of speech to keep them from boiling _over_ into fierce
articulation. All this was internal, chiefly, and of course not
recognized by Mr. Silas Peckham. The idea, that any full-grown,
sensible man should have any other notion than that of getting the most
work for the least money out of his assistants, had never suggested
itself to him.

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