| | 1 | Author: | unknown | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The arrow of gold, or, The shell gatherer  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “A young man, about eighteen years of age,
five feet ten inches high, with brown complexion,
dark hazel eyes very bright, and black
curling hair, left the Arrow Inn on the morning
of the 27th, to go to St. James's Palace. He
was an entire stranger in London; and, as he has
not returned, and had considerable money in his
purse, it is feared he has met with foul play, or
is lost. He wore a snuff-colored Lincolnshire
frock, blue kersey trowsers, and a brown seal-skin
cap with a visor. He has a proud air, and
is gentle-spoken. “Dear Dame Cresset: I lost my way—I
was pressed in a man-of-war—I am now a prisoner.
This man, Bolton, says he will give you
this, if he escapes free. Take care of my things!
I do not know the name of the ship—but I hope
yet to escape, sooner or later. Farewell. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 2 | Author: | Duganne
A. J. H.
(Augustine Joseph Hickey)
1823-1884 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Bianca, or, The star of the valley | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | DUSK was deepening
over the Alpine
summits, and huge
shadows stalked
slowly downward,
broadening gloomily
through the valleys.
All nature
was sinking into the
sealed quiet of a
winter's night, only
to be broken, during
the long hours,
by the rumbling
thunders of shifting
fields of snow in the passes and declivities of
the mountains, or perchance the sudden rushing
crash of an avalanchine slide of gathered ice,
bearing terror and destruction to the slumbering
villages below. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 4 | Author: | Duganne
A. J. H.
(Augustine Joseph Hickey)
1823-1884 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | WHEN a stranger, under guidance and protection of
police, or a home missionary, fearlessly breaking
bread with outcasts, penetrates some gloomy court or
narrow alley in the great Christian city of New York, he
beholds destitution and squalor of most repulsive feature:
he discovers tottering buildings crowded with sickly and
depraved human beings; stalwart, malign-looking men,
glancing furtively at every passer-by; brazen-browed women,
with foul words upon their reeking lips; children
of impure thoughts and actions, leering with wicked precocity.
When he enters the wretched abiding-places of
these unhappy people, he may find, amid associations of
vice and uncleanness, many suffering and patient souls
bearing earthly martyrdom with serene trust in their
Heavenly Father, and plucking, even out of their “ugly
and venomous” adversity, the “jewel” of immortal peace.
Such struggling ones do not dwell long in the darkness
and dolor of their probation; for the celestial ladders,
let down from Mercy's throne, rest quite as often upon the
black pavement of a tenant-court as amid the flowers that
tesselate a palace garden; and up, unceasingly, on the
shining rounds, glide disenthralled spirits of the poor and
lowly watchers for their Lord. “Your letter was received yesterday, and I have
spent the hours since in weeping and prayer. I have
prayed for you, dear Charles! with my heart sobbing, well-nigh
to break. O could I ever dream that you would
leave me for another? But I must not chide you—God
knows how I love you, dearest—I would lay down my life
for you cheerfully, without a murmur. But it is a hard
sacrifice you require of me—to give you up to another
woman, Charles! when you have sworn to love no other
one but your Margaret. You tell me you do not love the
lady—that you will marry her only for your worldly prospeets!
O Charles! I feel this is all wrong; but, alas!
what dare I say to you? I am poor—without fortune but
my deep love—God knows, I would resign a throne for
your affection, if I were a queen, instead of a portionless
girl. Charles! what was it that you said?—O Heaven!
did I understand your meaning?—that your love for me
would remain unchanged, and we should be happy after
your marriage! After your marriage, Charles! Do you
not know me better? Do you think I would consent to
do wrong, even of my great love for you? No, Charles!
after your marriage, we must never meet more! Beloved,
bear with me—it is the last time I shall annoy you. You
will wed the lady, Charles! Do not wrong her trust!—
be kind to her when she becomes your—wife! make her
happy! love her—and forget me! I shall not live a
great while, dear Charles; for my heart will break, in
thinking of the past, and of my hopes, all, all withered.
Farewell, dearest! I submit to your wishes, but I must
never see you after you are another's. Adieu, Charles!—
for the last time, my Charles! God bless and protect
you! Dear, dear Charles — husband!—I resign you.
Farewell, forever! “My dearest Rebecca,”—so the note ran—“I am
thinking of you by day, dreaming of you at night, adoring
you always. I have much to tell you, sweet one, and
must see you to-day. Fail not to meet me, at the usual
hour, at our trysting-place, darling of my soul. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 5 | Author: | Eggleston
Edward
1837-1902 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Hoosier school-master | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “WANT to be a school-master, do you? You?
Well, what would you do in Flat Crick
deestrick, I'd like to know? Why, the boys have
driv off the last two, and licked the one afore
them like blazes. You might teach a summer
school, when nothin' but children come. But I 'low it takes
a right smart man to be school-master in Flat Crick in the
winter. They'd pitch you out of doors, sonny, neck and heels,
afore Christmas.” “Dear Sir: Anybody who can do so good a thing as you
did for our Shocky, can not be bad. I hope you will forgive
me. All the appearances in the world, and all that anybody
says, can not make me think you anything else but a good
man. I hope God will reward you. You must not answer
this, and you hadn't better see me again, or think any more of
what you spoke about the other night. I shall be a slave
for three years more, and then I must work for my mother
and Shocky; but I felt so bad to think that I had spoken so
hard to you, that I could not help writing this. Respectfully, “i Put in my best licks, taint no use. Run fer yore life.
A plans on foot to tar an fether or wuss to-night. Go rite
off. Things is awful juberous. “This is what I have always been afraid of. I warned you
faithfully the last time I saw you. My skirts are clear of your
blood. I can not consent for your uncle to appear as your counsel
or to go your bail. You know how much it would injure him in
the county, and he has no right to suffer for your evil acts. O
my dear nephew! for the sake of your poor, dead mother—” | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 6 | Author: | Eggleston
Edward
1837-1902 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The mystery of Metropolisville | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | METROPOLISVILLE is nothing but a memory
now. If Jonah's gourd had not been a
little too much used already, it would serve an
excellent turn just here in the way of an apt
figure of speech illustrating the growth, the
wilting, and the withering of Metropolisville. The last
time I saw the place the grass grew green where once stood
the City Hall, the corn-stalks waved their banners on the very
site of the old store—I ask pardon, the “Emporium”—of
Jackson, Jones & Co., and what had been the square, staring
white court-house—not a Temple but a Barn of Justice—had
long since fallen to base uses. The walls which had echoed
with forensic grandiloquence were now forced to hear only
the bleating of silly sheep. The church, the school-house, and
the City Hotel had been moved away bodily. The village
grew, as hundreds of other frontier villages had grown, in the
flush times; it died, as so many others died, of the financial
crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution of speculative
madness. Its history resembles the history of other
Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take
the trouble to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble
to read about it, if the history of the town did not involve
also the history of certain human lives—of a tragedy that
touched deeply more than one soul. And what is history
worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is
not of value on account of its temples and statues, but on account
of its men and women. And though the “Main street”
of Metropolisville is now a country road where the dog-fennel
blooms almost undisturbed by comers and goers, though
the plowshare remorselessly turns over the earth in places
where corner lots were once sold for a hundred dollars the
front foot, and though the lot once sacredly set apart (on the
map) as “Depot Ground” is now nothing but a potato-patch,
yet there are hearts on which the brief history of Metropolisville
has left traces ineffaceable by sunshine or storm, in
time or eternity. “I should have come to see you and told you about my
trip to Metropolisville, but I am obliged to go out of town
again. I send this by Mr. Canton, and also a request to the
warden to pass this and your answer without the customary
inspection of contents. I saw your mother and your step-father
and your friend Miss Marlay. Your mother is failing
very fast, and I do not think it would be a kindness for me
to conceal from you my belief that she can not live many
weeks. I talked with her and prayed with her as you requested,
but she seems to have some intolerable mental burden.
Miss Marlay is evidently a great comfort to her, and,
indeed, I never saw a more faithful person than she in my
life, or a more remarkable exemplification of the beauty of a
Christian life. She takes every burden off your mother except
that unseen load which seems to trouble her spirit, and
she believes absolutely in your innocence. By the way, why did
you never explain to her or to me or to any of your friends
the real history of the case? There must at least have been
extenuating circumstances, and we might be able to help you. “Dear Sir: You have acted very honorably in writing
me as you have, and I admire you now more than ever. You
fulfill my ideal of a Christian. I never had the slightest claim
or the slightest purpose to establish any claim on Isabel Marlay,
for I was so blinded by self-conceit, that I did not appreciate
her until it was too late. And now! What have I to
offer to any woman? The love of a convicted felon! A
name tarnished forever! No! I shall never share that with
Isa Marlay. She is, indeed, the best and most sensible of
women. She is the only woman worthy of such a man as
you. You are the only man I ever saw good enough for Isabel.
I love you both. God bless you! “Dear Sir: Your poor mother died yesterday. She suffered
little in body, and her mind was much more peaceful
after her last interview with Mr. Lurton, which resulted in her
making a frank statement of the circumstances of the land-warrant
affair. She afterward had it written down, and signed
it, that it might be used to set you free. She also asked me to
tell Miss Minorkey, and I shall send her a letter by this mail.
I am so glad that your innocence is to be proved at last. I
have said nothing about the statement your mother made to
any one except Miss Minorkey, because I am unwilling to use
it without your consent. You have great reason to be grateful
to Mr. Lurton. He has shown himself your friend, indeed.
I think him an excellent man. He comforted your mother
a great deal. You had better let me put the writing your
mother left, into his hands. I am sure he will secure your
freedom for you. “My Dear, Good Friend: The death of my mother has
given me a great deal of sorrow, though it did not surprise me.
I remember now how many times of late years I have given her
needless trouble. For whatever mistakes her personal peculiarities
led her into, she was certainly a most affectionate mother. I
can now see, and the reflection causes me much bitterness, that I
might have been more thoughtful of her happiness without compromising
my opinions. How much trouble my self-conceit must
have given her! Your rebuke on this subject has been very
fresh in mind since I heard of her death. And I am feeling
lonely, too. Mother and Katy have gone, and more distant relatives
will not care to know an outlaw. “My Dear Miss Marlay: I find that I can not even
visit you without causing remarks to be made, which reflect
on you. I can not stay here without wishing to enjoy your
society, and you can not receive the visits of a `jail-bird,'
as they call me, without disgrace. I owe everything to you,
and it would be ungrateful, indeed, in me to be a source of
affliction and dishonor to you. I never regretted my disgrace
so much as since I talked with you last night. If I could
shake that off, I might hope for a great happiness, perhaps. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 7 | Author: | English
Thomas Dunn
1819-1902 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Ambrose Fecit, or, The peer and the printer | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | I must have been about eighteen
years old, or thereabouts, when, on a
holiday in June, I walked out, and
strolled by the high road to the country
beyond Puttenham. The highway
led me to a common over which it
crossed; and there, musing over the
commonplace events of the week, I
wandered over the knolls of gravelly
soil, and among the furze-bushes, watching
the donkies as they cropped the
scanty blades of grass, and indulged
occasionally in a tit-bit, in the way of
a juicy thistle. Tired at length, I sat
me down to rest under a thorn-bush
by the road-side, and was thus seated
when I heard the sound of voices.
Looking up, I saw a man approach,
who was leading by the hand a little
girl who appeared to be about ten
years of age. I was struck with the
appearance of the couple, and so scanned
them closely. “My dear young friend—A letter, received
as you left us last night, called me direct to
London, without an opportunity to bid you
more than this farewell, or to express, as I
ought, my sense of your kindness. Zara
sends her love to you, and the enclosed souvenir.
May God have you in his holy keeping. “Herewith you have a copy of my portrait
of little Zara, whose untimely fate in being
whisked away by a grim, grey-bearded ogre,
you have so much lamented. I think that I
have not only caught the features, but the
whole spirit of her extraordinary face. I
should like your criticism on that point, for
you were so fond of her that her expression
must be firmly fixed on your mind. “My dear Ambrose:—Read this letter as
carefully as you like, and then—burn it. “My dear Ambrose:—You have been
nearly four years absent from England,
and I have done my best to send
and keep you away. Now, I write to
you to urge you to come back. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 8 | Author: | unknown | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Good company for every day in the year | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to “skyey influences.”
I profess no indifference to the movements of
that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the
weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of
that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on
the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the
thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if
thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their
stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical,
heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasoned feet on
glittering ice-pavements; bright eyes glancing above the
uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her yashmack;
school-boys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders;
the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing
back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or blazing upon
ice-jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this to
complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,
— its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in
the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with
fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales
of the equinox have their varieties, — sounds of wind-shaken
woods, and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement,
hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this
dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very
clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or
take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath
and above, reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of
Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz administers
his hydropathic torment, —
“A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench, —
The land it soaks is putrid”; —
or rather, as everything, animate and inanimate, is seething
in warm mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old
and rheumatic, is trying the efficacy of a Thompsonian
steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the heavy plash
of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous, melancholy
drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of
water-ducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a
dim, leaden-colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter,
shutting down about one, beyond which nothing is visible
save in faint line or dark projection; the ghost of a church
spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who can extract
pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a
trick of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted. Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and
standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason
and other high Crimes; and Sentence upon Saturday
last was pronounced against him by this Court, To be put to
death by the severing of his head from his body; of which
Sentence execution yet remaineth to be done: “It begins: — `Dear Uncle,' (I had always instructed
the child so to call me, rather than father, seeing we can
have but one father, while we may be blessed with numerous
uncles) `I suppose you will wonder how I came to be
at St. Louis, and it is just my being here that I write to
explain. You know how my husband felt about Nelly's
death, but you cannot know how I felt; for, even in my
very great sorrow, I hoped all the time, that by her death,
John might be led to a love of religion. He was very unhappy,
but he would not show it, only that he took even
more tender care of me than before. I have always been
his darling and pride; he never let me work, because he
said it spoiled my hands; but after Nelly died, he was
hardly willing I should breathe; and though he never spoke
of her, or seemed to feel her loss, yet I have heard him
whisper her name in his sleep, and every morning his hair
and pillow were damp with crying; but he never knew I
saw it. After a few months, there came a Mormon preacher
into our neighborhood, a man of a great deal of talent
and earnestness, and a firm believer in the revelation to
Joseph Smith. At first my husband did not take any
notice of him, and then he laughed at him for being a believer
in what seemed like nonsense; but one night he was
persuaded to go and hear Brother Marvin preach in the
school-house, and he came home with a very sober face. I
said nothing, but when I found there was to be a meeting
the next night, I asked to go with him, and, to my surprise,
I heard a most powerful and exciting discourse, not wanting
in either sense or feeling, though rather poor as to argument;
but I was not surprised that John wanted to hear
more, nor that, in the course of a few weeks, he avowed
himself a Mormon, and was received publicly into the sect.
Dear Uncle, you will be shocked, I know, and you will wonder
why I did not use my influence over my husband, to
keep him from this delusion; but you do not know how
much I have longed and prayed for his conversion to a religious
life; until any religion, even one full of errors,
seemed to me better than the hardened and listless state of
his mind. “`My first wife, Adeline Frazer Henderson, departed
this life on the sixth of July, at my house in the city of
Great Salt Lake. Shortly before dying she called upon
me, in the presence of two sisters, and one of the Saints, to
deliver into your hands the enclosed packet, and tell you of
her death. According to her wish, I send the papers by
mail; and, hoping you may yet be called to be a partaker
in the faith of the saints below, I remain your afflicted, yet
rejoicing friend, “To-day I begged John to write, and ask you to come
here. I could not write you since I came here but that
once, though your letters have been my great comfort, and
I added a few words of entreaty to his, because I am dying,
and it seems as if I must see you before I die; yet I fear
the letter may not reach you, or you may be sick: and for
that reason I write now, to tell you how terrible a necessity
urged me to persuade you to such a journey. I can write
but little at a time, my side is so painful; they call it slow-consumption
here, but I know better; the heart within me
is turned to stone, I felt it then — Ah! you see my mind
wandered in that last line; it still will return to the old
theme, like a fugue tune, such as we had in the Plainfield
singing-school. I remember one that went, `The Lord is
just, is just, is just.' — Is He? Dear Uncle, I must begin
at the beginning, or you never will know. I wrote you from
St. Louis, did I not? I meant to. From there, we had a
dreary journey, not so bad to Fort Leavenworth, but after
that inexpressibly dreary, and set with tokens of the dead,
who perished before us. A long reach of prairie, day after
day, and night after night; grass, and sky, and graves;
grass, and sky, and graves; till I hardly knew whether the
life I dragged along was life or death, as the thirsty, feverish
days wore on into the awful and breathless nights, when
every creature was dead asleep, and the very stars in heaven
grew dim in the hot, sleepy air — dreadful days! I was
too glad to see that bitter inland sea, blue as the fresh lakes,
with its gray islands of bare rock, and sparkling sand shores,
still more rejoiced to come upon the City itself, the rows of
quaint, bare houses, and such cool water-sources, and, over
all, near enough to rest both eyes and heart, the sunlit
mountains, `the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 9 | Author: | Hall
Baynard Rush
1798-1863 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Frank Freeman's barber shop | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Our southern coast, as the reader doubtless knows,
is fringed with a net-work of islands, many of which
have not yet a growth sufficient for introduction to
a school atlas. Some of these miniature lands are
not inhabited and rarely visited; while others are,
at certain seasons, resorts for “marooning”—a picnic
sort of life passed for weeks in extemporaneous
sheds of boards and canvas. A few of the islets
are large enough for one or more plantations; and,
hence, are like immense gardens in which are embowered
lordly mansions with spacious lawns in
front and comfortable “quarters” at convenient
distances—a negro village of neat cabins, usually
white-washed, and always each surrounded with its
own domain of truck-patch, and boasting of its henhouse,
pig-pen, and other offices. “Nephew, I send $2,000—I know your scruples.
But I will positively take no denial. See here—
don't refuse the additional—I'll pitch it in the fire, if
you send any back. You'll have it hard enough
with the remaining $2,000. “Edward, my dearest:—May the Lord sustain
you!—and He will. But we have both been long
prepared for this:—Dr. Jordan thinks there is no
hope of my life beyond next summer! Edward!
can we not meet once—the last? And your dear
wife—my much beloved—my only daughter, since
Sophia preceded me home!—will she not come
again? Ah! Edward! if I might go to my rest—
in your arms and hers! “Edward! oh, Edward!—I would—but, no! no!
you never can believe me now! I call God to witness—I
never, no never, loved any but you—I love
none other now! By the unutterable agony of my
frenzied soul, do not for God's sake, oh! do not
curse me!.... Good God! can it be possible!
I did not mean it! I know not why I did
it! I have not—I have not! I will not! Oh! say,
Edward! is it not a dream?—wake me from it!
Forgive, forgive, forgive me! Bid me come and
lie down at your feet and die! Call me only once
by the dear name—and then kill me! Oh! why,
why did you not command me to stay ever near
you! You were to blame—no! no! how dare I reproach?
One trial, Edward—but one! I would
give the universe—I would give my life—God knows
I would—to stand where I did for a moment....
Vain! I cannot—cannot!—I am going mad!....
But I am not—I am not so fallen! I will not so
fall! I will leap into the sea first!..... Stay!
don't curse me! Pray for me! Yes, yes, I that
laughed at prayer, now with deep groanings of my
soul, and with my face in the dust call on you, Edward!
my wronged husband, and as a minister of
Christ, to pray for me. I am penitent—I have not
sinned—I will die rather! I will plunge into the
ocean. Oh! dear Edward!—husband, dear husband!
and for the last, I write those sacred words—
farewell, farewell!” “Rev. and very dear Brother:—I remain, this
year, at Point Lookout, where we shall establish our
new paper. It is to be called “The Scarifier and
Renovator.” I expect to edit awhile, myself. We'll
make an impression on the soul-killers. Besides, I
can do a vast amount of good here, in other ways.
I have been instrumental, by the blessing of God, in
freeing more than twenty-five, since my last, in
March! Most of them, with a little help from my
secret assistants in the lower countries, succeeded
(you will be rejoiced to learn) in bringing off property
enough to pay expenses, and afford a handsome
remuneration. I forwarded the poor fugitives to the
old fellow—you know where. “Master!—a dear name yet—though I appear as
a traitor!—a name I shall ever love, even if my new
friends(?) constrain me to use their cold language.
Yes, dear master! you knew me better than I know
myself: you would never let me vow! Oh! I remember
that one sermon—`Is thy servant a dog,
that he should do this thing?' They look on me as
noble and free!—alas!—I feel myself a slave now,
and worse than before; I have become in my own
eyes `a dog!'—I have done it. “Rev. and dear Sharpinton:—My soul is fairly
on fire—it fairly cries out, `Away with the accursed
slavers from the earth!' Oh, heavens! doctor,
they've killed our Somerville; and in defence of his
press! Freedom!—where's our right to publish the
truth—the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Don't tell me of freedom! Union or no union!
down with the gag-loving, press-muzzling, slavery-aiding,
colonization-scheming, God-defying, double-dyed,
negro-lashing, humanity-crushing, base, grovelling,
truckling villains, that, in face of the sun, will
assault and pull down a printing-office, and pitch the
types into the street, and shoot down, spite of law,
justice, and rights of man, the noble Somerville, and
standing to defend his rights! It hadn't ought to be
the 19th century! no, it hadn't ought to!— I
know it cannot be done; but, still, follow me, ye
friends of the poor, down-trodden, brute-degraded,
blood-squeezed, and sweat-defrauded sons of Africa!
oh! ye men of tried souls, ye true Americans, and
we will drive the accursed South into the earth-girdling
ocean! I did you a great, a very great wrong—and I am
very sorry for it. And yet I always more than half
believed you must be true. God be thanked—that
dear Edward redeemed you—how would I now feel,
if that infernal dealer had got you!—poor Edward,
how he looked when he got my note and bid up the
$4,000! “* * I told uncle I would write about Sarah
—your dear mother. She died many months ago,
and very suddenly, and full six weeks before we left
the north or arrived at Evergreen. And while you
now mourn that you can never see her again—yet
15
you will rejoice your oversight had nothing to do
with her death. God, Frank, is kind to his people,
that they may not have over much sorrow! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 10 | Author: | Hawthorne
Nathaniel
1804-1864 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The house of the seven gables | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England
towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely-peaked
gables, facing towards various points of the compass,
and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The
street is Pyncheon-street; the house is the old Pyncheon-house;
and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted
before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the
title of the Pyncheon-elm. On my occasional visits to the
town aforesaid, I seldom fail to turn down Pyncheon-street,
for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two
antiquities, — the great elm-tree, and the weather-beaten
edifice. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 11 | Author: | Hawthorne
Nathaniel
1804-1864 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The snow-image | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | One afternoon of a cold winter's day, when the sun
shone forth with chilly brightness, after a long storm,
two children asked leave of their mother to run out and
play in the new-fallen snow. The elder child was a
little girl, whom, because she was of a tender and
modest disposition, and was thought to be very beautiful,
her parents, and other people who were familiar
with her, used to call Violet. But her brother was
known by the style and title of Peony, on account of
the ruddiness of his broad and round little phiz, which
made everybody think of sunshine and great scarlet
flowers. The father of these two children, a certain
Mr. Lindsey, it is important to say, was an excellent
but exceedingly matter-of-fact sort of man, a dealer in
hardware, and was sturdily accustomed to take what
is called the common-sense view of all matters that
came under his consideration. With a heart about as
tender as other people's, he had a head as hard and
impenetrable, and therefore, perhaps, as empty, as one
of the iron pots which it was a part of his business to
sell. The mother's character, on the other hand, had a
strain of poetry in it, a trait of unworldly beauty, — a
delicate and dewy flower, as it were, that had survived
out of her imaginative youth, and still kept itself alive
amid the dusty realities of matrimony and motherhood. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 12 | Author: | Herbert
Henry William
1807-1858 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The cavaliers of England, or, The times of the revolutions of 1642 and 1688 | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | It is the saddest of all the considerations which weigh upon
the candid and sincere mind of the true patriot, when civil dispute
is on the eve of degenerating into civil war, that the best,
the wisest, and the bravest of both parties, are those who first
fall victims for those principles which they mutually, with equal
purity and faith, and almost with equal reason, believe to be
true and vital; that the moderate men, who have erst stood
side by side for the maintenance of the right and the common
good — who alone, in truth, care for either right or common
good — now parted by a difference nearly without a distinction,
are set in deadly opposition, face to face, to slay and be slain
for the benefit of the ultraists — of the ambitious, heartless, or
fanatical self-seekers, who hold aloof in the beginning, while
principles are at stake, and come into the conflict when the
heat and toil of the day are over, and when their own end, not
their country's object, remains only to be won. “You know too much — you know too much!” cried Jasper,
furious but undaunted. “One of us two must die, ere either
leaves this room.” “Agnes: By God's grace I am safe thus far; and if I can
lie hid here these four days, can escape to France. On Sunday
night a lugger will await me off the Greene point, nigh the
35
mouth of Solway. Come to me hither, to the cave I told thee
of, with food and wine so soon as it is dark. Ever my dearest,
whom alone I dare trust. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 15 | Author: | Herbert
Henry William
1807-1858 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | England was happy yet and free under her Saxon kings.
The unhappy natives of the land, the Britons of old time, long
ago driven back into their impregnable fastnesses among the
Welsh mountains, and the craggy and pathless wilds of Scotland,
still rugged and hirsute with the yet uninvaded masses of
the great Caledonian forest, had subsided into quiet, and disturbed
the lowland plains of fair England no longer; and so
long as they were left free to enjoy their rude pleasures
of the chase and of internal welfare, undisturbed, were content to
be debarred from the rich pastures and fertile corn-fields which
had once owned their sway. The Danes and Norsemen, savage
Jarls and Vikings of the North, had ceased to prey on the
coasts of Northumberland and Yorkshire; the seven kingdoms
of the turbulent and tumultuous Heptarchy, ever distracted by
domestic strife, had subsided into one realm, ruled under laws,
regular, and for the most part mild and equable, by a single
monarch, occupied by one homogeneous and kindred race,
wealthy and prosperous according to the idea of wealth and
prosperity in those days, at peace at home and undisturbed
from without; if not, indeed, very highly civilized, at least
supplied with all the luxuries and comforts which the age knew
or demanded—a happy, free, contented people, with a patriarchal
aristocracy, and a king limited in his prerogatives by the
rights of his people, and the privileges of the nobles as secured
by law. “My dear wife—farewell! Bless my boy—pray for me, and
let the true God hold you both in his arms. “I received your letter with judignation, and with scorn
return you this answer, that I cannot but wonder whence you
gather any hopes that I should prove, like you, treacherous to
my sovereign; since you cannot be ignorant of my former
actions in his late majesty's service, from which principles of
loyalty I am no whit departed. I scorn your proffers; I disdain
your favor; I abhor your treason; and am so far from
delivering up this island to your advantage, that I shall keep
it to the utmost of my power for your destruction. Take this
for your final answer, and forbear any further solicitations: for
if you trouble me with any more messages of this nature, I will
burn the paper, and hang up the messenger. This is the immutable
resolution, and shall be the undoubted practice of him
who accounts it his chiefest glory to be his majesty's most loyal
and obedient subject. It would have been a difficult thing, even in England, that
land of female loveliness, to find a brighter specimen of youthful
beauty than was presented by Rosamond Bellarmyne, when
she returned to her home, then in her sixteenth year, after witnessing
the joyful procession of the 29th of May, which terminated
in the installation of the son in that palace of Whitehall
from which his far worthier father had gone forth to die. “We hereby grant free permission to the Count de Grammont
to return to London, and remain there six days, in prosecution
of his lawful affairs; and we accord to him the license
to be present at our palace of Whitehall, on the occasion of
his betrothal to our gracious consort's maid-of-honor, the beautiful
Mistress Elizabeth Hamilton. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 16 | Author: | Herbert
Henry William
1807-1858 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Wager of battle | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | In the latter part of the twelfth century—when, in the reign
of Henry II., fourth successor of the Conqueror, and grandson
of the first prince of that name, known as Beauclerc, the
condition of the vanquished Saxons had begun in some sort to
amend, though no fusion of the races had as yet commenced,
and tranquillity was partially restored to England—the greater
part of the northern counties, from the Trent to the mouths
of Tyne and Solway, was little better than an unbroken chase
or forest, with the exception of the fiefs of a few great barons,
or the territories of a few cities and free borough towns; and
thence, northward to the Scottish frontier, all was a rude and
pathless desert of morasses, moors, and mountains, untrodden
save by the foot of the persecuted Saxon outlaw. “King Henry II. to the Sheriff of Lancaster and Westmoreland,
greeting—Kenric, the son of Werewulf, of Kentmere, in
Westmoreland, has showed to us, that whereas he is a free
man, and ready to prove his liberty, Sir Foulke d'Oilly, knight
and baron of Waltheofstow and Fenton in the Forest of Sherwood,
in Yorkshire, claiming him to be his nief, unjustly vexes
him; and therefore we command you, that if the aforesaid
Kenric shall make you secure touching the proving of his
liberty, then put that plea before our justices, at the first assizes,
when they shall come into those parts, to wit, in our
good city of Lancaster, on the first day of December next ensuing,
because proof of this kind belongeth not to you to
take; and in the mean time cause the said Kenric to have
peace thereupon, and tell the aforesaid Sir Foulke d'Oilly that
he may be there, if he will, to prosecute thereof, against the
aforesaid Kenric. And have there this writ. “In the case of Kenric surnamed the Dark, accused of
deer-slaying, against the forest statute, and of murder, or
homicide, both alleged to have been done and committed
in the forest of Sherwood, on the 13th day of September
last passed, the grand inquest, now in session, do find that
there is no bill, nor any cause of process. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 17 | Author: | Holland
J. G.
(Josiah Gilbert)
1819-1881 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The bay-path | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | It snowed incessantly. Far up in the fathomless grey the
shooting flakes mingled in dim confusion, or crossed each
other's lines in momentary angles, or came calmly down for
a brief space, and then fled traceless into the tempest; and
all, as they met the breath of the blast, became its burden,
and were swept in blinding and spiteful clouds to the earth.
All around, the storm was vocal. The pines hissed like
serpents, and the old oak, catching the wild roar of his
children in the far north-east, as it came on and on, over
writhing and bowing forests, took up the same strong
strain, and, struggling like a giant, sent it off triumphantly
to the south-western hills. “To John Searles, constable of Springfield. These are
in his majesty's name to require you presently uppon the
recite hereof that you attach the body of John Woodcock
uppon an execution granted to Mr George Moxon by the
Jury against the said John Woodcock for an action of
slander: and that you keepe his body in prison of irons until
he shall take some course to satisfie the said George
Moxon: or else if he neglect or refuse to take a ready
course to satisfie the said execution of £6 13s 4d granted
by the jury that then you use what means you can to put
him out to service and labor till he make satisfaction to the
said Mr George Moxon for the said £6 13s 4d, and also to
satisfie yourself for such charges as you shall be at for the
keeping of his person: And when Mr Moxon and yourself
are satisfied, then you are to discharge his person out of
prison. Fail not at your peril.*
* Copied from the Record of the original Document. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 18 | Author: | Holland
J. G.
(Josiah Gilbert)
1819-1881 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Miss Gilbert's career | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Dr. Theophilus Gilbert was in a hurry. He had
been in a hurry all night. He had been in a hurry all
the morning. While the village of Crampton was
asleep, he had amputated the limb of a young man ten
miles distant, attended a child in convulsions on his way
home, and assisted in introducing into existence an infant
at the house of his next-door neighbor—how sad
an existence—how terrible a life—neither he nor the
poor mother, widowed but a month, could imagine. “Gentlemen:—Will you allow me to call your attention
to a novel, just completed by my daughter,
Miss Fanny Gilbert, entitled, `Tristram Trevanion,
or, The Hounds of the Whippoorwill Hills, by Everard
Everest, Gent.?' I am not, perhaps, a reliable judge
of its merits. Paternal partiality and exclusive devotion
to scientific and business pursits may, in a degree,
unfit me to decide upon the position in the world of art
and the world of popular favor it is calculated to
achieve. In fact, I have not relied upon my own judgment
at all. The book has been read to competent literary
friends, and their voice is unanimous and most
enthusiastic in its favor. The impression is that it cannot
fail to be a great success. With your practical eyes,
you will recognize, I doubt not, in the title of the book,
the characteristic poetic instincts of the writer, and her
power to clothe her conceptions in choicest language.
We have concluded to offer this book to your celebrated
house for publication. It is our desire that it
may come before the public under the most favorable
auspices—such, in fact, as your imprint alone would
give it. I think I can promise you the undivided support
of the local press, as I certainly will pledge all
the personal efforts on behalf of the volume which my
relations to the writer will permit me to make. I
may say to you, in this connection, that I have a large
medical practice, extending throughout the region, and
that I know nearly every family in the county. Please
reply at once, and oblige, &c., &c. “Dr. Sir—Yours about book Tristram, &c., rec'd.
Novels except by well-known writers not in our line,
and we must decline. “My Dear Sir—Your favor, relating to the manuscript
novel of your daughter, is at hand, and has been
carefully considered. The title of the book seems to us to
be exceedingly attractive, and, in a favorable condition of
the market, could not fail of itself to sell an entire edition.
Unfortunately, the market for novels is very dull
now, and, still more unfortunately for us, our engagements
are already so numerous, that were the market
the best, we should not feel at liberty to undertake
your book. We could not possibly make room for it
and do it justice. Thanking you for your kind preference
of our house, we remain, “Dear Sir—I have carefully read your daughter's
manuscript novel, `Tristram Trevanion,' and find
it quite interesting, though I doubt whether it can
ever achieve much success. I should say that it is a
very young novel—written by one who has seen little
of life, and much of books. The invention manifested
in the incidents is quite extraordinary, and displays
genius, though the characters are extravagant. But I
do not write to criticize the book. Worse books have
found many buyers. I accept it on the terms upon
which we settled, as it is; but there are one or two
points touching which I wish to make some suggestions.
The hero, Tristram Trevanion, does not marry Grace
Beaumont, as he ought to do. I think I understand the
public mind when I say that it will demand that this
marriage take place. It could be done by altering a
few pages. Again, I think that the public will demand
that the Jewish dwarf, Levi, be made in some way to
suffer a violent death at the hand of Trevanion. One
word about the title. I confess to its music, but it
seems to me to be so smooth as to present no points to
catch the popular attention. Besides, I find that the
`Hounds of the Whippoorwill Hills' make their appearance
but once in the story, and have no claim upon
the prominence given them on the title-page. Your
daughter will think it very strange, no doubt; but I believe
that the sale of the book would be increased by
making the title rougher—more startling. How does
this look to you—`Tristram Trevanion, or Butter
and Cheese and All;' or this—`Tristram Trevanion, or
The Dwarf with the Flaxen Forelock'? There is another
course which is probably preferable to this, viz.: that of
making a title which means nothing, and will puzzle
people—a title that defines and explains nothing—bestowed
in a whim, as we sometimes give a child a name.
What would your daughter think of `Rhododendron,'
or `Shucks'? “This night I take one of the most important steps
of my life. My father and I have had a long conversation
about you, in which he has endeavored, by promises
and threats, to make me renounce you, and break my
pledge to you. I have reasoned with him, besought him,
on my knees begged of him to relent, but all to no purpose.
He forbids you the house, and commands me to
renounce you forever, or to renounce him. He was very
angry, and is implacable. I have taken the alternative he
offers me. I shall leave New York to-night. I leave
without seeing you, because I fear that an interview would
shake my determination; but I am yours—yours now,
and yours forever. I shall go where you will not find
me, and, if you love me—ah! Frank, I know you do—
you will make no search for me. I shall not write to
you, because money will buy the interception and miscarriage
of letters, but I shall think of you, and pray
for you every day, nay, all the time. “Come! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 19 | Author: | Holmes
Mary Jane
1825-1907 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Millbank, or, Roger Irving's ward | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | EVERY window and shutter at Millbank was closed.
Knots of crape were streaming from the bell-knobs,
and all around the house there was that deep hush which
only the presence of death can inspire. Indoors there was a
kind of twilight gloom pervading the rooms, and the servants
spoke in whispers whenever they came near the chamber where
the old squire lay in his handsome coffin, waiting the arrival of
Roger, who had been in St. Louis when his father died, and
who was expected home on the night when our story opens.
Squire Irving had died suddenly in the act of writing to his
boy Roger, and when found by old Aleck, his hand was grasping
the pen, and his head was resting on the letter he would
never finish. “Heart disease” was the verdict of the inquest,
and then the electric wires carried the news of his decease to
Roger, and to the widow of the squire's eldest son, who lived
on Lexington avenue, New York, and who always called herself
Mrs. Walter Scott Irving, fancying that in some way the
united names of two so illustrious authors as Irving and Scott
shed a kind of literary halo upon one who bore them. “My Dear Boy — For many days I have had a presentiment
that I had not much longer to live, and, as death begins
to stare me in the face, my thoughts turn toward you, my dear
Roger —.” “My Dear Boy, — For many days I have been haunted
with a presentiment that I have not much longer to live. My
heart is badly diseased, and I may drop away any minute, and
as death begins to stare me in the face, my thoughts turn toward
you, the boy whom I have been so proud of and loved so much.
You don't remember your mother, Roger, and you don't know
how I loved her, she was so beautiful and artless, and seemed
so innocent, with her blue eyes and golden hair. Her home
was among the New Hampshire hills, a quarter of a mile or so
from the little rural town of Schodick, whose delightful scenery
and pure mountain air years ago attracted visitors there during
the summer months. Her father was poor and old and infirm,
and his farm was mortgaged for more than it was worth, and
the mortgage was about to be foreclosed, when, by chance, I
became an inmate for a few weeks of the farmhouse. I was
stopping in Schodick, the hotel was full, and I boarded with
Jessie's father. He had taken boarders before, — one a young
man, Arthur Grey, a fast, fashionable, fascinating man, who
made love to Jessie, a mere child of sixteen. Her letter,
which I inclose, will tell you the particulars of her acquaintance
with him, so it is not needful that I go over with them.
I knew nothing of Arthur Grey at the time I was at the farm-house,
except that I sometimes heard him mentioned as a
reckless, dashing young man. I was there during the months
of August and September. I had an attack of heart disease,
and Jessie nursed me through it, her soft hands and gentle
ways and deep blue eyes weaving around me a spell I could
not break. She was poor, but a lady every whit, and I loved
her better than I had ever loved a human being before, and I
wanted her for my wife. As I have said, her father was old
and poor, and the farm was mortgaged to a remorseless creditor.
They would be homeless when it was sold, and so I
bought Jessie, and her father kept his home. I know now
that it was a great mistake; know why Jessie fainted when the
plan was first proposed to her, but I did not suspect it then.
Her father said she was in the habit of fainting, and tried to
make light of it. He was anxious for the match, and shut his
eyes to his daughter's aversion to it. “My husband: — It would be mockery for me to put the
word dear before your honored name. You would not believe
I meant it when I have sinned against you so deeply and
wounded your pride so sorely. But oh, if you knew all which
led me to what I am, you would pity me even if you condemned,
for you were always kind, too kind by far to a wicked girl
like me. But I am not so bad as you imagine. I have left
you, I know, and left my darling baby, and he is here with me,
but by no consent of mine. I am not going to Europe. I am
going to Charleston, where Lucy is, and shall mail this letter
from there. Every word I write will be true, and you must believe
it and teach Roger to believe it, too, for I have not sinned
as you suppose, and Roger need not blush for his mother
except that she deserted him. I am writing this quite as much
for him as for you, for I want him to know something of his
mother as she was years ago, when she lived among the Schodick
hills, in the dear old house which I have dreamed about so
often, and which even here on the sea comes up so vividly
before me, with the orchard where the mountain shadows fell so
early in the afternoon, and the meadows where the buttercups
and clover-blossoms grew. Oh, I grow sick, and faint, and
dizzy when I think of those happy days and contrast myself as
I was then with myself as I am now. I was so happy, though
I knew what poverty meant; but that did not matter. Children,
if surrounded by loving friends, do not mind being poor, and I
did not mind it either until I grew old enough to see how it
troubled my father. My mother, as you know, died before I
could remember her, and my aunt Mary, my father's only
sister, and cousin Lucy's mother, took her place and cared for
me. “Squire Irving — Dear Sir — It becomes my painful duty
to inform you that not long after the inclosed letter from your
wife was finished, a fire broke out and spread so fast that all
hope of escape except by the life-boats was cut off. Your
wife felt from the first a presentiment that she should be
drowned, and brought the letter to me, asking that if I escaped,
and she did not, I would forward it at once to Millbank. I
took the letter and I tried to save her, when the sea ingulfed us
both, but a tremendous wave carried her beyond my reach, and
I saw her golden hair rise once above the water and then go
down forever. I, with a few others, was saved as by a miracle,
— picked up by a vessel bound for New York, which place I
reached yesterday. I have read Jessie's letter. She told me
to do so, and to add my testimony to the truth of what she had
written. Even if it were not true, it would be wrong to refuse
the request of one so lovely and dear to me as Jessie was, and
I accordingly do as she bade me, and say to you that she has
written you the truth. “Mrs. Irving tells me you were very kind to me,” she wrote,
“and though I have no recollection that you or any one but
Celine came near me, I am grateful all the same, and shall
always remember your kindness to me both then and when I
was a child, and such a care to you; I am deeply grateful to
all who have done so much for me, and I wish them to know
it, and remember me kindly as I do them. I am going away
soon, and I want to take with me all I brought to Millbank.
I have the locket, but the little dress I cannot find. Mrs.
Irving thinks you took it in the chest. Did you, and if so, will
you please send it to me at once by express, and oblige, “Mr. Irving: Can you forgive me when you hear who I
am, and will you try to think of me as you did in the days
which now seem so very far in the past. I have been your
ruin, Roger. I have brought to you almost every trouble you
ever knew, and now to all the rest I must add this, that I am
the child of your worst enemy, Arthur Grey. Don't hate me
for it, will you? Alice, who is much better than I, would say
it was God's way of letting you return good for evil. I wish
you would think so, too, and I wish I could tell you all I feel,
and how grateful I am to you for what you have done for me.
If I could I would repay it, but I am only a girl, and the debt
is too great ever to be cancelled by me. May Heaven reward
you as you deserve. ROGER had written to Frank, congratulating him upon
his approaching marriage, but declining to be present
at the wedding. He wished to know as little as possible
of the affairs at Millbank, and tried to dissuade Hester
from her visit to Mrs. Slocum. But Hester would go, and
three days before the great event came off she was installed in
Mrs. Slocum's best chamber, and had presented that worthy
woman with six bottles of canned fruit, ten yards of calico, and
an old coat of Aleck's, which, she said, would cut over nicely
for Johnny, Mrs. Slocum's youngest boy. After these presents,
Hester felt that she was not “spunging,” as she called it, and
settled herself quietly to visit, and to reconnoitre, and watch
the proceedings at Millbank. And there was enough to occupy
her time and keep her in a state of great excitement. “Magdalen has been very anxious for you to come to
Beechwood, and I should now extend an invitation for you to
do so, were it not that we have decided to leave at once for
Europe. We sail in the `Persia' next week, immediately after
my daughter's marriage, which will be a very quiet affair.
Hoping to see and know you at some future time, I am | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 20 | Author: | Holmes
Mary Jane
1825-1907 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Rose Mather | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The long disputed point as to whether the South
was in earnest or not was settled, and through
the Northern States the tidings flew that Sumter
had fallen and the war had commenced. With the first
gun which boomed across the waters of Charleston bay,
it was ushered in, and they who had cried, “Peace!
peace!” found at last “there was no peace.” Then, and
not till then, did the nation rise from its lethargic slumber
and shake off the delusion with which it had so long
been bound. Political differences were forgotten. Republicans
and Democrats struck the friendly hand, pulse
beat to pulse, heart throbbed to heart, and the watchword
everywhere was, “The Union forever.” Throughout
the length and breadth of the land were true, loyal
hearts, and as at Rhoderic Dhu's command the Highlanders
sprang to view from every clump of heather on
the wild moors of Scotland, so when the war-cry came
up from Sumter our own Highlanders arose, a mighty
host, responsive to the call; some from New England's
templed hills, with hands inured to toil, and hearts as
strong and true as flint; some from the Empire, some
the Keystone State, and others from the prairies of
the distant West. It mattered not what place had given
them birth; it mattered little whether the Green Mountains
of Vermont, the granite hills of New Hampshire, or
the shadowy forests of Wisconsin had sheltered their
childhood's home; united in one cause they rallied round
the Stars and Stripes, and went forth to meet, not a
foreign foe, but alas, to raise a brother's arm against
another brother's arm in that most dreadful of all anarchies,
a national civil war. “Dear Mother: Pray don't think you've seen a ghost when you
recognize my writing. You thought me dead, I suppose, but there's
no such good news as that. I'm bullet-proof, I reckon, or I should
have died in New Orleans last summer when the yellow fever and I
had such a squabble. I was dreadfully sick then, and half wished I
had not run away, for I knew you would feel badly when you heard
how I died with nobody to care for me, and was tumbled into the
ground, head sticking out as likely as any way. I used to talk about
you, old Martha said, and about Rose, too. Dear little Rose. I
actually laid down my pen just now, and laughed aloud as I thought
how she looked when I treated her to those worms; telling her I had
a necklace for her! Didn't she dance and didn't Tom thrash me,
too, till I saw stars! Well, he never struck me a blow amiss, though
I used to think he did. I was a sorry scamp, mother,—the biggest
rascal in Boston. But I've reformed. I have, upon my word, and
you ought to see how the people here smile upon and flatter me, telling
me what a nice chap I am, and all that sort of thing. “My dear Mrs. Mather—I am sure you will pardon the liberty I
am taking. My apology is that I feel so deeply for you, for I understand
just what you are suffering,—understand how wearily the
hours drag on, knowing as you do that with the waning daylight his
step will not be heard just by the door, making in your heart little
throbs of joy, such as no other step can make. I am so sorry for you,
and I had hoped you at least might be spared, but God in his wisdom
has seen fit to order it otherwise, and we know that what He
does is right. Still it is hard to bear,—harder for you than for me,
perhaps, and when this morning I heard the car signal given, I knelt
just where I did when my own husband went away, and asked our
Heavenly Father to bring your Willie back in safety, and, Mrs. Mather,
I am sure He will, for I felt, even then, an answer to my prayer,
—something which said, `It shall be as you ask.' “My dear Mr. Captin Carleton:—I can't help puttin' dear before
your name, you seem so nigh to me since Isaac told how kind you
was to him. I'm nothin' but a shrivelled, dried up widder, fifty odd
years old, but I've got a mother's heart big enough to take you in
with my other boys. I know you are a nice, clever man, but
whether you're a good one, as I call good, I don't know, though bein'
you come from Boston I'm afraid you're a Unitarian, and I'll never
quit prayin' for you till I know. That's about all I can do, for I'm
poor a'most as Job's turkey; but if there's any shirts or trouses, or the
like o' that wants makin', let me know, for I don't believe your
mother or sister is great at sewin'. Mrs. Marthers ain't, I know,
though as nice a little body as ever drawed the breath. Your wife is
dead, too, they say, and that comes hard agin. I know just how
that feels, for my man died eighteen years ago last October, a few
weeks before Isaac was born. “Dear Mother: We've met the rascals, and been as genteelly
licked as ever a pack of fools could ask to be. How it happened nobody
knows. I was fitin' like a tiger, when all on a sudden I found
us a-runnin' like a flock of sheep; and what is the queerest of all, is
that while we were takin' to our heels one way the Rebels were goin'
it t'other, and for what I know, we should of been runnin' from
each other till now if they hadn't found out the game, and so turned
upon us. My dear, dear, darling Annie:—It will be days, perhaps, before
you see this letter, and ere it reaches you somebody will have told
you that your poor George is dead! Are you crying, darling, as you
read this? Do the tears fall upon the words, `poor George is dead?'
Don't cry, my precious Annie. It makes my heart ache to think how
you will sorrow and I not there to comfort you. It's hard to die
away from home, but not so hard as it would once have been, for I
hope I am a different man from the one who bade you good-bye a few
short months ago; and, darling, it must comfort you to know that
your prayers, your sweet influence have led the wanderer home to
God. We shall meet again in Heaven, Annie,—meet where partings
are unknown. It may be many years, perhaps, and the grass upon
my grave may blossom many times ere you will sleep the sleep which
knows no waking but at the last you'll come where I am waiting you.
I know I shall be there, Annie. All the harassing doubts and fears
are gone. Simple faith in the Saviour's promise has taken them away,
and left me perfect peace. God bless you, Annie darling, and grant
that as you have guided me, so you may guide others to that home
above, where I am going so fast. You have made me very happy
since you have been my wife, and I bless you for it. It makes my
death pillow easier to know that not one bitter word has ever passed
between us,—nothing but perfect confidence and love. I was not
good enough for you, darling. None knows that better than myself.
You should have married one of gentler blood and higher birth than
I, a poor mechanic. I have always felt this more than you, perhaps,
and have tried so hard not to shame you with my homespun ways.
had I lived, I should have improved constantly beneath your refining
influence, but that is all past now, and it is well, perhaps, that it is
so. As you grew older you might have felt there was a lack in me, a
something which did not satisfy the cravings of your higher nature,
and though you might not have loved me less, you would have seen
that we were not wholly congenial. I am well enough in my way,
but I am not a suitable companion for a girl of culture like yourself,
and I've often wondered that you should have chosen me. But you
did, and again I bless you for it. Never, never, was year so happy as
the one I spent with you, my darling, darling Annie, and I was looking
forward to many such, but God has decreed it otherwise, and
what he does we know is right. I shall never see you again! and
though they will bring me back to you, I shall not feel your tears
upon my face, or see you bending over my coffin-bed! Still I know
you will do this, and that makes it necessary for me to tell what, perhaps,
has been too long withheld, because I would spare you if possible. “I am not all bad,” he said; “and on that quiet morning, when
beneath the cover of the Virginia woods I lay, watching the Union
soldiers coming so bravely on, there was a dizziness in my brain, and
a strange, womanly feeling at my heart, while a sensation I cannot
describe thrilled every nerve when I saw in the distance the Stars and
Stripes waving in the summer wind. How I wanted to warn them of
their danger, to bid them turn back from the snare so cunningly devised,
and how proud I felt of the Federal soldiers when contrasting
them with ours. I fancied I could tell which were the Boston boys,
and there came a mist before my eyes, as I thought how your dear
hands and those of little Rose had possibly helped to make some portion
of the dress they wore. “Will was badly wounded,—lay on the field all night;—Jimmie
missing,—supposed to be a prisoner. I am well. “Army of Potomac, and about as licked out an army as you ever
seen. To all it may concern, and 'specially Miss Anny Graam. I
send you my regrets greetin', and hopin' this will find you enjoyin'
the same great blessin'. Burnside has made the thunderinest blunder,
and more'n a million of our boys is dead before Fredericksburgh.
Mr. Mathers was about riddled through, I guess, and the Corporal,
—wall, may as well take it easy,—I fit for him like a tiger, till they
nocked me endways, and I played dead to save my life. But the
Corporal's a goner,—took prisoner with an awful cut on his neck;
and now what I'm going to tell you is this: the night before the battle
I came upon him prayin' like a priest, kneelin' in an awful mud-puddle,
and what he said was somethin' about Heaven, and Anny,
whitch, beggin' your pardon, I think means you, and so I ast him in
case of bad luck, if I should write and tell you. I don't think he
could have ben in a vary sperritual frame of mind, for he told me to
mind my bisiness, but I don't lay it up agin him, and when them too
tall, lantern-jawed sons of Balam grabbed him as he was tryin' to
skedaddle with the blood a spirtin' from his neck, I pitched inter
'em, and give 'em hale columby for a spell, till they nocked me flat
and I made bleeve dead as I was tellin' you. Don't feel bad, Miss
Graam. Trust luck and keep your powder dry, and mabby he'll
come back sometime. “I mistrusted he was there,” Bill wrote; “and so when me
and and some other fellow-travellers was safely landed in purgatory,
I went on an explorin' tower to find him. But you bet it
want so easy gettin through that crowd. Why, the camp-meetin'
they had in the Fair Grounds in Rockland, when Marm Freeman
bust her biler hollerin,' was nothin' to the piles of ragged, dirty, hungry-lookin'
dogs; some standin' up, some lyin' down, and all lookin'
as if they was on their last legs. Right on a little sand-bank, and so
near the dead line that I wonder he didn't get shot, I found the Corp'ral,
with his trouses tore to tatters, and lookin' like the old gal's
rag-bag that hangs in the suller-way. Didn't he cry, though, when
I hit him a kelp on the back, and want there some tall cryin' done by
both of us as we sat there flat on the sand, with the hot sun pourin'
down on us, and the sweat and the tears runnin' down his face, as
he told me all he'd suffered. It made my blood bile. I've had a
little taste of Libby, and Bell Isle, too; but they can't hold a candle
to this place. Miss Graam, you are the good sort, kinder pius like;
but I'll be hanged if I don't bleeve you'll justify me in the thumpin'
lies I told the Corp'ral that day, to keep his spirits up. Says he,
`Have you ever ben to Rockland since Fredericksburg?' and then
I tho't in a minute of that nite in the woods when he prayed about
Anny; and ses I to myself, `The piusest lie you ever told will be
that you have been home, and seen Miss Graam, with any other
triflin' additions you may think best;' so I told him I had ben hum
on a furbelow, as the old gal (meanin' my mother) calls it. And I
seen her, too, says I, Miss Graam, and she talked an awful sight
about you, I said, when you orto have seen him shiver all over as he
got up closer to me, and asked, `What did she say?' Then I went
on romancin', and told him how you spent a whole evenin' at the ole
hut, talkin' about him, and how sorry you was for him, and couldn't
git your natural sleep for thinkin' of him, and how, when I came
away, you said to me on the sly, `William, if you ever happen to
meet Mr. Carleton, give him Anny Graam's love, and tell him she
means it.' Great Peter! I could almost see the flesh come back to
his bones, and his eyes had the old look in 'em, as he liked to of
hugged me to death. I'd done him a world of good, he said, and for
some days he seemed as chipper as you please; but nobody can stan'
a diet of raw meal and the nastiest watter that ever run; and ses I
to myself, Corp'ral will die as sure as thunder if somethin' don't
turn up; and so, when I got the hang of things a little, and seen
how the macheen was worked, sez I, `I'll turn Secesh, though I hate
'em as I do pizen.' They was glad enuff to have me, bein' I'm a
kind of carpenter and jiner, and they let me out, and I went to work
for the Corp'ral. I'll bet I told a hundred hes, fust and last, if I did
one. I said he was at heart Secesh; that he was in the rebel army,
and I took him prisoner at Manassas, which, you know was true.
Then I said his sweetheart, meanin' you, begging your pardon, got
up a row, and made him jine the Federals, and promise never to go
agin the flag, and that's how he come to be nabbed up at Fredericksburg.
I said 'twan't no use to try to make him swear, for he thought
more of his gal's good opinion than he did of liberty, and I set you
up till I swan if I bleeve you'd a knowed yourself, and every one of
them fellers was ready to stan' by you, and two of 'em drinked your
helth with the wust whisky I ever tasted. One of 'em asked me if I
was a fair specimen of the Northern Army, and I'll be darned if I
didn't tell him no, for I was ashamed to have 'em think the Federals
was all like me. I guess, though, they liked me some; anyway, they
let me carry something to the Corp'ral every now and then, and I
bleeve he'd die if I didn't. I've smuggled him in some paper and a
pencil, and he is going to wright to you, and I shall send it, no matter
how. The rebs won't see it, and I guess it's pretty sure to go
safe. I must stop now, and wright to the old woman. “My dear Annie,” he wrote, “I do not know that this letter will
ever reach you. I have but little hope that it will. Still it is worth
trying for, and so here in this terrible place, whose horrors no pen
or tongue can adequately describe, I am writing to you, who I know
think sometimes of the poor wretch starving and dying by inches in
Andersonville. Oh, Annie, you can never know what I have suffered
from hunger and thirst, and exposure and filth, which makes my
very blood curdle and creep, and from that weary homesickness
which more than aught else kills the poor boys around me. When
I first came here I thought I could not endure it, and though I knew
I was not prepared, I used to wish that I might die; but a little
drummer boy from Michigan, who took to me from the first, said his
prayers one night beside me, and the listening to him carried me
back to you, who, I felt sure, prayed for me each day. And so hope
came back again, with a desire to live and see your dear face once
more. Mylittle drummer boy, Johnny, was all the world to me, and
when he grew too sick to sit or stand, I held his poor head in my lap,
and gave up my rations to him, for he was almost famished, and ate
eagerly whatever was brought to us. We used to say the Lord's
Prayer together every night, when a certain star appeared, which he
playfully called his `mother,' saying it was her eye watching over
him. It was a childish fancy, but we grow childish here, and I, too,
have given that star a name. I call it `Annie,' and I watch its coming
as eagerly as did the little boy, who died just as the star reached
the zenith and was shining down upon him. His head was in my
lap, and all there was left of my coat I made into a pillow for him,
and held him till he died. His mother's address is —, Michigan.
Write to her, Annie, and tell her how Johnny died in the firm
hope of meeting her again in heaven. Tell her he did not suffer
much pain,—only a weakness, which wasted his life away. Tell her
the keepers were kind to him, and brought him ice-water several
times. Tell her, too, of the star at which he gazed so long as he had
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