University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

A promising match; and an old acquaintance very unpromising.

Steele.

—Anon.

—Shakspeare.

The Reverend Mr. John Littlejohn, when he returned home
from his accidental (and almost midnight) visit to Mrs. Williams,
was filled with thoughts that had of late been strangers
to him. They were not thoughts inimical to the holy functions
he had been performing; and, indeed, they were intimately
connected with the scene at the bed-side of the sufferer.

He found his father anxiously waiting for him, having sat
up beyond his usual hour of retiring. Although he had
every reason to suppose that his son was restored to a sane
state of his reasoning faculties, yet the father could not forget
the past, and every minute that the son overstaid the time of his
expected return, caused a pang, such as none but a parent,
who had suffered from such a cause, can conceive.

Saint Paul's clock struck twelve. The old man closed his
book and crossed his spectacles on its cover. He looked at
his watch, although he knew that it agreed with the clock. He
got up and traversed the room. He took up his book again,
and tried to read. He snuffed the candles and wiped the
glasses of his spectacles: still he could not read. He listened
to catch the sound of every passing footstep on the pavement.
He heard the approach of steps—“it is—no.” They
pass. Another, and another. One step—the bell rings—the

impatient father flies to the door. It is his son—such as he
wished to see him.

It is somewhat singular, but as true as the generality of this
history, that all the principal personages concerned in it were
sleepless on this night: some the whole night, others much
beyond the usual time of sinking to rest. We have seen Spiffard
and his merry companions; his unfortunate wife, his mother,
and Miss Portland; Mrs. Williams and Miss Atherton;
all awake: Cooke and his faithful Yankee may have rested or
not; Williams was at Philedelphia, seeking pleasures adapted
to his character; Mrs. Johnson, improving in health, slept
soundly; and Henry, no longer a watchman, enjoyed the repose,
not of the monarch on his couch of down, but of the
ship-boy rocking on “the high and giddy mast.” But return
we to Courtlandt-street and the Littlejohns.

“I was in hopes, sir, that you were in bed and asleep. I
fear, from appearances, that you have been made uneasy by
my protracted absence at this time of night.”

“I ought not, perhaps, to have felt any uneasiness, but your
late indisposition—”

“I believe, sir, that you need never be anxious in that respect
again. And yet we cannot soon forget the past.”

The father was silent. He pressed the hand of his son and
tears filled his eyes; but he remained silent.

They entered the parlour, and the son proceeded.

“When I look back to the past it is like a horrid dream.
But that which preceded the dream can never occur again. It
appears to me that I have attained to a clear view of my duty
to my Creator and his creatures, since the aberration of my intellect.
And a clear view of man's duty presents a clear view
of his interest. But I have seen one, even this night, within
this hour, who, if her conduct is uniformly such as I have witnessed,
would insure peace and sanity to all who came within
the sphere her brightness illumines. A steady continuance in
the right path to any one who could be fortunate enough to
have her for a companion.” Thus frank was the accustomed
intercourse between this son and father. There was, however,
an evident excitement in the young clergyman which
might have alarmed the old gentleman; but the son went on
to detail the incidents of the evening with so much collectedness,
that, although he dwelt rather minutely on all that concerned
one person, his father had no fears for his intellects.
The young man inquired, rather earnestly, what he knew respecting

the sister of Mrs. Williams. His father had never,
heard of the existence of such a person.

After a pause, the young priest said, “she is a very fine woman.
A very extraordinary woman.”

“Mrs. Williams,” said the father, “is said to have been a
beauty; and her sister may be such now, if younger and—”

“She is not like her sister. Never could Mrs. Williams
have been like her! she is all mind, soul, purity, piety?”

“And beautiful?”

“O no. Not according to the world's view of beauty: excepting
the beauty of gracefulness and form. She has neither
what I once thought youth, nor beauty. Her face is marked
by the scars left on it by that disease which modern science
has banished from the civilized world: yet her countenance is
lovely, because animated by benevolence—her eyes beam with
intelligence—and her lips, although colourless, are in form
and expression perfect.”

“Why, Thomas, I do not wonder that you staid so long,”
said the old man smiling.

“I only staid for prayer, and to read to the unhappy Mrs.
Williams, and for a few moments conversation with Miss
Atherton.”

“Atherton? True, I have heard that was the name of the
family. Good night. I suppose we shall hear more of this
wonder.”

Next day the young clergyman left his father's door to visit
Mrs. Williams, as he had promised, at the request of Miss
Atherton, the previous night; the night of sleeplessness. The
thought of seeing again that scarred and seamed face did not
deter him. But he was always a “man of his word.”

As he descended the steps he met Spiffard, and recognising
him as the person he had seen with his father in the lunatic
asylum, he bowed to him and passed on.

Spiffard looked at him as at a stranger. He did not think
of the unhappy man he had visited on that occasion. The
graceful figure and intelligent countenance of the person who
saluted him, could not be reconciled to the remembrance of
the sick, and haggard, and wild appearance, of that son he
had seen; and he could not forbear, almost as soon as he was
admitted to the merchant's presence, saying, “have you more
than one son, sir?”

“No—not now. You must have met my son as you came
in; but so happily changed that you did not recognise him.

Heaven has restored him to me, only made more dear to me
by the trials he has passed and the sufferings we have both endured.
I had another son, older than Thomas. He was even
brighter in intellect and richer in every endowment of nature
than this: he was pure, stainless, body and soul; brilliant and
quick of apprehension, rich in knowledge, which flowed upon
him as if by the attraction of love to its lover. But his ever
active mind exhausted his perfect frame, and he fell dead at
my feet, with the pen in his hand, and an unfinished essay on
death spread open on his desk.”

“I am sorry I have recalled the memory of past sorrow,
sir.”

“O, we see the evils of the past as through a veil. The
hard lines and sharp angles are lost. Their connection
with our present existence is felt in mitigated sorrow, and
sometimes as adding beauty to our hopes of the future,
shedding sun-light through the mist on the distant prospect.
Happily for man, the brighter passages of former days come
out to his retrospection with additional brilliancy; and he possesses
the power to linger on the review of them. The griefs
we have sustained lose their poignancy; resignation to the will
of God, founded upon the contemplation of his attributes and
his works; upon the events we have seen and see; and upon
the knowledge communicated to us by his word; takes the
sting from every evil, and from death itself. I thought when
you accompanied me to the asylum of the deranged, and heard
my remaining son utter the ravings of insanity, that the affliction
was beyond bearing: yet that aberration of intellect now
appears to me, at times, as a surety for a healthful state of
mind and body for a long futurity. Certain it is he is made
dearer to me, and I believe better, by his sufferings. O, how
beautiful is the parable of the lost son restored!”

This conversation restored the hopes of Spiffard. He
opened to the merchant the recesses of his sorrows. He confessed
the headlong rashness which had precipitated him into
an engagement for life with one whose former life and private
habits he had not made himself acquainted with. He confided
to this man, whose benevolence he had witnessed, and whose
wisdom he heard, the whole of his matrimonial sorrows, and
exposed their cause. He expatiated upon the miseries he had
witnessed in youth, as inflicted upon his father and his household.
He blamed his own blind credulity in taking a woman
to wife, however admirable, merely on the knowledge of her
obvious talents, and apparent strength of intellect. He attribnted

his reliance upon his wife's being above the reach of
temptation, to that confidence he placed in the powers of her
mind.

Mr. Littlejohn encouraged him to hope. Advised him to
repress his feelings in his wife's presence, and remember that
he had had too great confidence in himself. He conjured
him to return home; treat the erring one with kindness rather
than passion or sternness. Examine himself, whether he had
not, by negligence or want of confidence, irritated a quick and
feeling temper. His conscience said, “guilty;” but, “could
I help it?” whispered something, perhaps self-love.

After a long conversation, in which Mr. Littlejohn played
the friendly monitor, our hero resolved to return home, pour
the balm of reconciliation and forgiveness into the wounded
spirit, (for such he knew it must be) of the faulty creature he
had left with harshness, and he went his way encouraged to
hope that he yet might find a wife and a home.

As Spiffard was about to depart, the merchant, remembering
the behaviour of the young comedian at Doctor Cadwallader's,
on seeing Mrs. Williams, and now interested in what
respected her, from his son's eulogiums on her sister, asked
him if he had learned any thing more of Mrs. Williams since
that evening.

“Yes, sir, she is my aunt, the sister of my mother.”

“Your aunt? And the lady, now attending upon her—is
her sister.”

“Her younger sister, sir, and consequently likewise my aunt;
but no more like her elder sister than the morning star to
Erebus. The likeness of Mrs. Williams to my mother, both
in person and in the badges of weakness which were so apparent
when I first saw her, occasioned feelings and conduct that
must have appeared very extraordinary. This lady is an
angel. She has, (her parents being dead) come to this country
from motives of love and benevolence: and when her sister
shall have departed this life, she will be without friends or family
connexions, except in me.”

Mr. Littlejohn did not pursue the subject further, and his
young friend departed.

As Spiffard passed rapidly through Broadway on his return
home, (or what he hoped once more to make a home,) he was
much excited. He walked fast. All the apparent listlessness
of the first part of the morning was gone. He no longer felt
the lassitude resulting from a sleepless night, and many hours
of extreme anxiety. All thoughts was determined to one object.

He heeded nothing; he saw nothing in the great thoroughfare;
the main artery of the great commercial metropolis.
Many passed him who knew him, but saw him not. Intent on
their own purposes, hurrying from their dwelling places to
South-street, Water-street, Pearl-street or Wall-street, to the
store-house, counting-house, bank or exchange. Others, to
whom he was known as the favourite comedian of the day,
laughed as they looked at his care-worn face, and thought it
very comical; while some, pointing to the man whose talents
had delighted them, while he gave life to the clowns of the
poet, which are to live when he is forgotten, said, “that's
Spiffard! how pale he looks.”

He heard not, he saw not, when suddenly, “Ho! Spiffard!”
was shouted in his ears, so loud and discordantly, that he could
not but look up to see whence the salutation came.

He saw, a few paces from him, crossing the street, and advancing
to place himself in his path-way, a man much taller
than himself, with his eyes glaring on him, and his face glowing
through a mask of dirt. His mouth was distended by a
smile as he shouted the name of “Spiffard,” but the smile
contradicted the expression of the eyes, which was wild and
ghastly. He lifted aloft and swung round his head a piece of
hickory, plucked from a load of fire-wood recently thrown on
the pavement; which enormous club he wielded with the
strength of a giant. He stood directly in front of Spiffard,
obliging him to stop. With arm uplifted, and rags fluttering in
a north-west wind, he repeated, “ho! Spiffard!” and added,
“stand at my command!”

The young man looked mildly but firmly in his eye, and
said quietly, “how is it with you, Knox? I am sorry to see
you thus—so thinly clad in this biting wind.”

The poor wretch, who thus barred his passage, and accosted
him, had been last seen by him in the lunatic asylum, as has
been noticed. He had escaped, and found means to exchange
the decent apparel which had been supplied by the liberality
of George Frederick Cooke, (and which, of course, he wore
at the time of his escape) for the motley tatters in which he
now appeared. The exchange was effected at the “Fivepoints,”
and he imagined his present dress a disguise. Those
who had robbed him, administered the poison that wrought
him to the lamentable frenzy in which he now presented
himself.

His miscellaneous apparel was composed of all manner of
decompositions. Part of a check handkerchief round his close

shaved head, and straws fantastically entwined with it. The
debris of a surtout coat, formed a waistcoat for him, covering
one thigh to the knee. The remnant of what is commonly
called a plaid cloak, was thrown over his shoulders, like a Roman
toga, or a Mohawk's blanket. Coat he had none. A
pair of tattered nankeen pantaloons, hung a little below the
knee on one leg, and to the ankle of the other; otherwise,
his unhosed legs and feet were seen through the rents of an
off-cast pair of short boots. His toes were at perfect liberty.

Soothed by the calm and familiar manner in which his boisterous
address was met, he dropped his ponderous staff, and
said: “Is it not an excellent dress for Edgar? `Poor Tom's
a cold. Tom will throw his head at them.' Would you believe
it, Mr. Spiffard, the manager refused me an engagement; four
nights—as a star. I only asked a clear benefit. Spiff! I want
money! I must be obeyed! I want brandy!”

This man had been well educated: had prided himself on
being a gentleman. Showed scars obtained as a duellist in
his own country. Talked of the infamous climate of “this
country.” Came from home as one of the theatrical corps for
the New-York Theatre, and had been discharged for excessive
intemperance. He had been known to drink two quarts of
unmixed brandy to prepare himself for acting. Cooke lectured
him, and pointed out the evil and its consequences, and
after his discharge, supported him. But what was given for
food or raiment, was bartered for poison; madness followed,
and he was consigned to the hospital.[1]

Spiffard endeavoured to soothe him, and persuade him to
return to the asylum. He offered to call a coach for him;
and, as he appeared for a moment to listen, represented the
comfortable state in which he had seen him in the hospital.
Suddenly he broke out:

“Return! Return to the house of bondage! Ha! ha! I'm
free! No chains! No wife! You are married! ha, ha, ha!
Huzza for liberty and brandy! Go to your wife! To your
wife! Ha, ha, ha!”

Shouting with violent gesticulations, he brandished his club;
and the poor creature rushed past, crying—“Go to your wife!
Your wife! To a nunnery go! To a nunnery go!”

Even these words from a maniac—but in madness self-inflicted—sounded
portentous to the ear of the husband, and
recalled the scene of the past night. His new raised hopes
sunk, and he continued his walk with a sickened and despairing
spirit.

On entering the house, his hopes could not but revive upon
seeing Emma Portland, with her book in her hand, sitting by
a cheerful fire; and the breakfast-table ready for the family,
as usual. He was welcomed with smiles, which showed that
she was unconscious of aught amiss.

She supposed that Mr. Spiffard had gone to take a morning
walk. Mrs. Epsom, she knew, had gone to market. Mrs.
Spiffard, as is usual with most players, passed the morning,
until late, in bed.

To look on innocence and beanty, is quieting to man's spirit;
and innocence and beauty were united in no common
degree, with taste and intelligence, in Emma Portland.

“As medical witness in our courts of criminal judicature, I have often
been summoned to give testimony in cases of death occasioned by intemperance,
or by other causes which have eventuated fatally: and for the better
discharge of this duty, have, within the period of the last twelve or fourteen
years, examined many bodies deceased by accident, or other causes,
operating suddenly. The details, therefore, which I now communicate,
are derived almost entirely from autopsic examinations thus made.

“The body of the dead inebriate, often exhibits in its external parts, a
physiognomy quite peculiar, and as distinctive as that which presents itself
when life has been terminated by an over dose of laudanum. Sometimes
the surface, more especially at its superior parts, as about the head, neck,
or face, betrays a surcharged fullness of the vascular system; and the cutaneous
investure of these parts, and of the extremities, is characterized by the
results of an increased action of the exhalents, by blotches, &c.: and this
state, the consequence of previous over action has so impaired the vital
energies of the surface, that effusions of a serous or sanguineous quality
are to be observed. I remember a most striking instance of this last circumstance,
occurring about eighteen months ago. The individual, a middle
aged adult subject, had long indulged freely in the use of distilled spirits.
He died of universal dropsy. Some few days previous to his death, hemorhagic
discharges from the surface of the inferior extremities, were noticed in
several places, and they continued until the close of his life. Nor would
creosote, or pyroligneous acid, or any other means, modify in the least the
sanguineous discharge. I have also known old cicatrized wounds to bleed
anew in such subjects previous to their decease; and blistered surfaces to
become extremely annoying.

“The brain of the intemperate is the rallying point of much disorganizing
action; but to notice the morbid changes minutely, would be too technical
for your purpose. Dissections have shown preternatural fulness of a venous
character. The membranes of the brain over distended with blood. Effusions
of serum, to a great extent, between the substance of the brain and
its immediate coverings; and in the lateral ventricals large quantities of
serum. Dr. Cooke, of London, in his work on nervous diseases, has recorded
the case of a man who was brought dead into the Wesminster Hospital,
who had just drank a quart of gin for a wager. The evidences of
death being quite conclusive, he was immediately examined; and within the
lateral ventricles of the brain was found a considerable quantity of a limpid
fluid, distinctly impregnated with gin, both to the sense of smell and taste,
and even to the test of inflammability. Dr. Kirk of Scotland, has demonstrated
a like truth, by the dissection of the dead body of an inebriate. The
fluid from the lateral ventricles of the brain, exhaled the smell of whiskey;
and when he applied a candle to it, in a spoon, it burnt with a `lambent
blue flame.'

“I have repeatedly had cases of a similar character within my inspection.
Upon removing the bony covering of the brain, the exhalation of ardent spirits,
on several occasions, has been strongly manifested to the olfactories of
the by-standers; and the effused fluid conspicuous for its quantity and
quality. On one occasion, some spectators who were entering the room
while the anatomical examination was going on, asked what puncheon of
rum we had opened.”