University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
NOTES BY THE WAY.

A Tale is like a web; like muslin, where the thread is
regular, visible, and thin; like sheeting, where it is the
same, but stout; and in both cases the fabric is plain and
monotonous. It may be like Brussels carpeting, where
the thread disappears for a time, and is not easily traced, —
one color being now in sight, and then another, — and yet, in
all mutation, the design of the artist is preserved, and what
is lost in clearness of detail is made up in beauty of composition.
A Tale may be like a garden, one quarter of
which shall be devoted to cereal grains, another to kitchen
sauce, a third shall be reserved for fruits, while the fourth is
gay with flowers, and the connection between the several
parts consists of naked paths alone; yet it is a garden, —
Horticulture enforces its principles and maintains its dignity
throughout, and the innate garden-love is satisfied. So a
Tale may have its various departments, the only apparent
connection between which shall be the leaves of the book and
enumeration of the chapters, and still please Historical taste.
There is a real connection in both instances; — in the first,
it is that of the brooding and immanent power of Nature,
which is always a unity and a beauty; in the last, it is the
heart of the Author, which is likewise a unity, and should
be a beauty.

A Tale is like this June morning, when I am now writing.
I hear from my open windows the singing of birds,
the rumble of a stage-coach, and the blacksmith's anvil.
The water glides prettily through elms, and willows, and

the back-sides of houses. There are deep shadows in my
landscape, and yonder hill-side, with its blossoming apple-trees,
glows in the sunlight, as if it belonged to some other
realm of being. On the right of my house is a deep gorge,
wet, weedy, where are toads and snakes; and fringing this,
and growing up in the midst of it, are all sorts of fresh,
green shrubs, and the flickering, glossy leaves of white
birches. Superb rock-maples overhang the roof of an iron
foundery, down under the hill at my feet. The dew, early
this morning, covered the world with topazes and rainbows,
and my child got her feet wet in the midst of glory.
Through gully and orchard, basement windows and oriels,
shade and sheen, vibrates a delicious breeze. Over all,
hangs the sun; down upon the village looks that eye of
infinite blessedness, and into the scene that urn of exhaustless
beauty pours beauty; the smoke from the foundery, and
the darkness of the gorge, are beautiful; cows, feeding in
my neighbor's paddock, are pleasant to look upon; Paddy,
with pickaxe on his shoulder, is happy; Rusticus, in the
cornfield, is a picture; and the granite, through the verdure
of a distant mountain-side, gleams out like silver. This
morning's sun idealizes everything. Nature is not shocked
at toads. A Tale might be thus diversified; and if through
it streamed love and gladness from the soul of the writer,
like sunlight, the structure would still be harmonious, and
the effect pleasing.

A Tale is like human life, — of which, indeed, it purports
to be a transcript, — and human life exhibits some
contrast. The feelings even of a good man, for a single
day, undergo sundry transitions; the subjects of thought and
occasions of emotion crowd a little upon each other. There
will be great bunches of shadow in one corner of a man's
heart, and right over against them, and looking down upon

them, and gilding, it may be, their edges, will be great expanses
of brightness. Through all the peace and delight of
one's being will be heard the perpetual wail of some sad
memory, even as I now hear, in this sunny, enlivening morning,
the melancholy note of the peewee.

Richard had his varieties. During this Knuckle Lane
business, other things went on. Memmy and Bebby lived,
— lived in his heart, and in his arms, and in his fingers,
and in his ears, and before his eyes. They ran all over the
carpet of his days; they sprawled upon it; sometimes they
blew soap-bubbles on it; sometimes they were like twin
cherubs asleep in one corner of it. Who shall follow their
thread, or describe their figure? Plumy Alicia Eyre was
another thread; or rather she was like the colored pile that
is wrought into the plain warp of Brussels carpeting aforesaid,
and is reproduced at odd intervals. Miss Eyre indicated,
for a while, an interest in Knuckle Lane; but, for
reasons which will be hereafter discoursed upon, that attachment
was not lasting. Clover, — what has become of
him? He has been absent a long time, — not a thread in the
carpet, so much as a moth under it, and silently eating into
it; and when the carpet is taken up and shaken, there will
be found unexpected holes in it, and many rotten places.
The Knuckle Lane attempt did not demolish Clover, nor did
the Griped Hand win his fellowship. He was like a disturbed
ghost, strolling through the earth, — a sort of disconcerted
fiend. He appeared at Green Mill occasionally, the
basin of his lower lip, and the crooks in his upper lip, in no
wise diminished. In the night, going home from his meetings,
Richard now and then saw, through the darkness before
him, the arms of Clover describing their favorite contortions,
like the vanes of a windmill; and when he got home,
there were giant streaks of shadow playing in his imagination,

and these would sometimes hang over and threaten his
dreams. Captain Creamer seemed to wilt and dry up, after
his failure; though whether, like the poisonous rhus, there
might not be some mischief in him after he was dry,
remained to be seen.

But we must advert to one or two things that bear upon
the fortune of our friend.

During his perambulations, — and perhaps we should say
his notivagancy, if nobody will be troubled at the word —
Here a verbal quiddity plucks at the sleeve of narration, and
obliges us to stop and answer, that it is hard to please
everybody. Leo X. preserved with care, and what wholeness
he might, the remains of ancient Rome in the modern
city. Sixtus V. would “clear away the ugly antiquities,”
could not endure the Apollo Belvidere in the
Vatican, and righted the Minerva by substituting a cross for
her spear; and so he went on idealizing the whole city, —
that is, reducing it by what he would call the rules of a
Christian Idealism. As if there were not a higher ideal in
suffering Minerva to remain as she was!

There are those who would clear our language of its
ugly antiquities, as if pagan Latin had not got into the
English, and become a part of it, and the best thing for us
was to make due use of it. We might say night-walking,
but that has a bad odor. A certain one was sorely shocked
when he found his good King, in his own palace, playing
with a basket of puppies about his neck; — that was low.
He was equally shocked, on returning to the street, to see a
cobbler promenading with side-sword and silk stockings; —
that was too high. Can any one tell us what is the aurea
mediocritas of our tongue? Besides, even as Richard addicted
himself to observation in behalf of his absent teacher
and friend, Mr. Willwell, so, as has been already premised,

we are writing with a latent reference to our Usbek cousins;
and might it not be well for us to give them some insight
into the structure and sources of our language, as well as
into our manners and customs? May it not be conjectured
withal that, in their incursions into the East, the ancient
Romans dropped some portions of their language in that distant
country, and that even ramifications or dialects of the
Tartar tongue shall at this day be found cognate with our
own? —

During his noctivagancy, we say, in the cause of Knuckle
Lane, Richard made many discoveries, and some which disturbed
him. He encountered the young men, Chassford
and Glendar, at gaming saloons, in tippling houses, and
sundry places where he thought they ought not to be, and
where it reflected no credit on the simplicity of their characters
or purity of their principles in being. Already, the
winter before, he saw them at the Grotto, and the sight
afforded him any but pleasant recollections.

Meanwhile he called once or twice at the Governor's, and
found these young men there. Their air was well-bred,
their dress fashionable, their conversation sprightly, and
their ease absolutely overwhelming. With a twirl of his
cane, or a touch of his goatee, Glendar could set Richard's
composure shaking like an earthquake. And Richard was
powerless, — he could not avenge himself. He did not
esteem the young men, but he had no desire to vent his
disesteem there. He sometimes thought he would speak to
Melicent or Barbara about them, but he did not. They
complimented the Knuckle Lane movement; yet Richard
felt they could not in heart be much concerned for it.

An event of greater interest to Richard was his election
to the Common Council of the city. It was the second
spring after his arrival in Woodylin, when, at a meeting of

those who styled themselves “The Friends of Improvement,”
he was unanimously nominated. Richard was
young, and a new-comer. Yet, it may be remarked, the
Ward in which he lived, comprising, as it did, the Factories
and Saw-mills, and all the Beauty of Woodylin, had many
new-comers in it, and this class of people were inclined to
support one of their own men. More than that, Richard,
by this time, had become sole proprietor of the rent of two
saws. How did this come about? Richard's father owned
a saw-mill; lived upon a stream emptying into the River,
and was able to cut more logs than he wanted and send
them down stream. We have said that Bill Stonners'
Point was the best booming privilege on the River. Well,
Chuk, Bill's sole heir, was sole owner of this chance. And
whom should Chuk want to assist, if not Richard? Whom
would he strike the picaroon week in and week out for, if
not Richard? So it was arranged that the elder Edney
should furnish the logs, Chuk boom them, and Richard saw
them. More than that, what Bill never would do, Chuk
was glad to do; he went up to the stream on which Mr.
Edney lived, and “drove” the logs. He rolled them into
the water; he helped them over shoals, rafted them, and
tended them as a flock of sheep, till he got them penned
in the boom. He would be out days and nights on this
business, never leaving it, rain or shine, and often waist-deep
in water for twelve-hours together. This boom of
Chuk's, lying, as it did, contiguous to the Mills, and so safe
in all ordinary freshets, he was considered a very fortunate
man who could acquire the entire use of; and Richard
was considered a fortunate man. This circumstance added
to Richard's consequence in the eyes of his neighbors.

Then he had so excellent a friend in Mr. Cosgrove, the

princely contractor for buildings, and who purchased of him
to large amounts.

It made a great stir at the Saw-mills when it was known
Richard had obtained control of Chuk's boom, though perhaps
not twenty people elsewhere had the least intelligence
of the matter.

These circumstances aided Richard's municipal advancement.

Yet, his success was not without impediment. In the
first place, the Catapulters had long ruled the New Town,
and expected to do so now. Next, the Dogbanes, for the
sake of putting a pretty trick on their hereditary enemies,
“over the River,” declared for Richard. To defeat this
ruse, the Catapulters proclaimed Richard a Hydriatic, and
brought up Richard's connection with a certain horse, whose
carcass Munk & St. John had caused to be thrown upon
the ice. The Dogbanes mortally feared water; and inasmuch
as neither party could use Richard, they silently concerted
to pounce upon him, like the animals whose names
they bore, and devour him. In other words, they united
upon a ticket which should destroy that of the Friends of
Improvement, and in place of Richard substituted the name
of Clover! This will hardly be credited by our near or distant
readers, nor would it have been credited in Woodylin
generally, or even among the large body of supporters of
either ticket. It was the result of despair in the two parties,
and of indefatigable management on the part of Clover.
At the caucuses, Clover, whose real character could not
have been commonly understood, represented that he was
the only man who could be led against Richard with any
prospect of success. In addition, Clover, as we say, electioneered
for himself and against Richard.

The union ticket did not prevail, and Richard carried the
polls by a handsome majority.

In the city councils, Richard found problems enough to
last Euclid one year at least, and grave responsibilities that
would make an impression on the shoulders of a small
Atlas. It was a post where a good man could do some good,
and a wise man be of some use. Mr. Langreen was Mayor,
and Nefon was an Alderman, and Richard was not altogether
without friends at the board. He was able to do something
for the furtherance of his favorite idea, the Knuckle Lane
project. While this, indeed, had been conducted chiefly by
individuals, there were many points in which the city government
could render it essential service. It was proposed
to new-lay the street that ran through Knuckle Lane, and
furnish that precinct with water at public expense. A
large space of ground that had lain neglected, quite in the
heart of the city, was purchased, fenced, and planted with
trees, for a park.

A new cemetery was consecrated, called Rosemary Dell.
To this some of the teuants of the old ground were conveyed;
here, also, a new grave was made for Violet, one of
the Orphans. Richard selected the spot, — his friends
erected a handsome monument; with his own hands he
planted shrubbery and flowers about it.

On the back side of Woodylin, and yet within ten minutes
walk of Centre-street Church, was what in some places
is called a valley, in others, a gully, through which the Pebbles
brook meandered. At a distance, this spot looked like a
vast redoubt of foliage, or a hollow imbedded in trees. Within
it the trees, elms and oaks, rose to a great height above the
observer. He saw at the bottom the thread-like rivulet, flowing
on like a lover's joy, as strolling, too, as lover's walks by
moonlight, crinkling its way along, and scolloping the ground

on either side, singing and shining all alone down its deep
bed, feeding the roots of trees, flinging its dew on the mosses,
and creating innumerable little pleasure-grounds for the
frogs. The banks were broken, deeply embayed, and boldly
projected. In this valley grew saxifrage, and spring-beauty,
and wild columbine, and here children came May-flowering.
The banks, too, were elevated and terrace-like, and
the ravine narrow; and, with the canopy of trees overhead,
it was a cool and shady spot, most refreshing to the imagination
and the feelings in a hot summer day, and just such
a place as one would wish to go into out of the sun. Among
the children, this spot had gone by the name of May-flower
Glen. But it had lost what the critics would call its unity,
and was parcelled off by rough fences into small lots, and
abandoned to cows and swine, and appropriated by little
moss-trooping children, who crept under the fences, and by
birds, who seem to have a life-estate in all that God hath
made. Richard, in his rambles with Memmy and Bebby,
had seen it, and admired it.

Through the influence of the Friends of Improvement,
May-flower Glen was conveyed to the city; by which it was
cleared, its bog drained, gravel-walks laid, and seats constructed.
It became a favorite resort of the citizens, and
tributary likewise to the cause of Knuckle Lane and the
Griped Hand; since here the rich and poor met together in
ways at once fraternal and respectful, joyous and refined.
So many of the Knuckle Lane people frequented it, there
was danger at one time of its losing caste, and becoming
not fashionable. But Evelina Redfern declared, if nothing
else, she would make a Christian duty of going there, not
to speak of what Ada Broadwell and the Lady Caroline did.

Among the first to call at Willow Croft and congratulate
Richard on his accession to office, was Miss Eyre; and this

she did in a way touchingly graceful, and insinuatingly delicate.
Richard's name, as one of the Common Councilmen
for Ward 2, had appeared in all the papers; and he saw it
in the evening, and again in the morning prints; and it
seemed to him as if he saw it the next day in everybody's
face. Munk read it, and Roxy must look into the paper,
and even Memmy spelt it out; and he felt as if in all houses
it had been read, and looked at, and spelt out. Mr. Gouch
and Silver, who were still in his employ, and of course voted
for him, were overjoyed that he had beaten Clover; and
now that he was, as it were, a part of the city, and was
backed by the whole city power, they realized that Clover
could do him, or them, or anybody else, no more harm.
They colored Richard's triumph and advantage so strongly
to his mind, he must needs feel it was great indeed, and feel,
too, as if he were the whole city, and Clover a very small
spot in it; and they were so enthusiastic for Richard, — they
hurraed him so, with the wink of their eyes, and the legerdemain
of their crowbars and pick-poles, — Richard might be
excused for believing everybody in the New Town and the
Old Town was his friend and constituent. The first little
honors a man receives are very thrilling, and seducing, and
softening, and make one feel as if he was all champagne,
and roses, and fiddle-strings.

These were new sensations to Richard. It may be
doubted if Teacher Willwell or Pastor Harold had prepared
him for the emergency. He could not now make observations
on what he saw, but upon what he was; and this was
public elevation, and private satisfaction, — it was, being a
Councilman of Woodylin, and an object of so much congratulation.
How would his motto, To be Good and do
Good, and the great purpose of his heart, to love and serve
God and his fellow-men, apply here? He mailed three

papers, the next day, containing the report of his election, —
to his Father, and particularly for his Mother, and to
his Teacher and Minister. He did think they would all be
glad; and when he reflected on what they would think and
say, and especially on what his pious mother would feel, he
silently prayed, “O, let me in this be good and do good!”
When he went to drop the papers in the office, the lobby
was full of people. Did these men know what a precious
message was crowding through them? Could they imagine
what strong delight those three wrappers enclosed? Did
they dream of the parental fascination in a single line of
small caps in those columns? One man, intent on a newspaper,
drew in his elbows to let Richard pass; another,
opening a letter containing a remittance, Richard had to go
round; a third, discussing the last night's play at the Theatre,
and chewing tobacco, turning suddenly, mistook Richard
for the floor. The clerk in the office, jesting at the window
with a Dry Fish Culler touching the removal of the latter
from his post, for a minute did not see the papers that
Richard handed up to him; and when he did, still laughing
with the other, he asked Richard if they were pamphlets,
and was seen to toss them, like peach-pits, into some hole or
other. The printers' boys jostled him with their great baskets.
Who cared for Richard's Mother?

So Richard had it all to himself; and there was enough
of it, and it was just as good to him as if everybody else
had it.

The clerk's indifferent look, a hundred people's preoccupied
look, weighed not a feather against his own feelings;
and, perhaps, if he thought anything about it, he took
some satisfaction in seeing his pride go to the stake, and
having his pleasant little emotions suffer a slight martyrdom.
It is natural to do so. If people won't notice us, we

retaliate upon them by calling them very stupid and dull;
or by inflating our merit in our own eyes, till we fancy ourselves
too great to be appreciated, and then going off like a
hero to oblivion. Our neglect is the measure of our greatness.
We have a certain bigness; and he who belittles us
belittles himself, — he who enlarges us enlarges himself.

So Richard was not discomforted. Indeed, he experienced
all reasonable attentions. Nefon took him warmly by the
hand, and expressed great pleasure in the election. Several
smiled upon him, as he passed them, in a manner which
said, “We know what has happened.” The “Friends of
Improvement” were delighted.

About this time it was, we say, that Miss Eyre called at
Willow Croft. She only added fuel to the flame of Richard's
self-complaisance. The little ripples that had been
stirring about in his bosom, she set all going again. She
was the breeze on his surface, and covered him all over
with most charming wavelets, and foam, and agitation.
She brought the color to his cheeks, and made the blood
warm in his veins. She talked to him about his mother,
and how glad she would be; and Clover, and how annoyed
he was; and the Common Council Chamber, and how honorable
to sit there: and, like a magician, she raised a mist
that rose from the floor, transparent and luminous; her form
and face were emparadized in it, and, like a cloud of transfiguration,
it expanded, and enfolded them both. Never
was Miss Eyre's voice so musical, never was her eye so tender,
never was her sympathy so entrancing; and Richard's
self-love, his susceptibility of encomium, his deep pleasure
in what had happened, — that weak and soft spot in his and
everybody's nature, — that spot which is so instinct with self,
and so alive to public handling, — that inbred regard to
reputation and character, which she touched so softly, so

deliciously, — these were all carried away by her; and we
might say, Richard himself — for there was not much else left
to him at that moment — Richard himself was carried away
by Miss Eyre. Plumy Alicia's triumph was complete. No,
it was no triumph; she would not have it so. If he seemed
to surrender, she magnanimously restored his arms; if he
was like to grow impassioned, she wisely counselled him;
if his eye had any unnatural fervor, she deliberately hushed
it. “Do not say `love;' — speech, words, breath, — what
are they to the doing, being, feeling? Not if you said it,
but if you were it; not what you can utter, but what you
can keep.” She said this with a kind of memento mori
motion of her finger, and left the room.

What he could keep! Keep, keep, keep; — that word
rang a good while in Richard's ear, and with different
inflections; — now upward, the doubtful interrogative; now
circumflective, the ironical; now downwards, the grave and
solemn.

That night, when he retired to his chamber, into his
thought of God and the Holy Spirit Miss Eyre could not
enter; into his hope of the Redemption of the world by
Christ she could not enter; into his calculations for the success
of the Griped Hand she could not enter; into what he
most loved of the spiritual, the humane, the beautiful, she
could not enter; to the deeper life of his soul she was not
kindred; of his heart of hearts she was not partaker. Her
only place seemed then to be to him in some little foolish
feelings of the hour. Between her and his principal existence
was a great gulf. He felt remorseful at what he had
done; he was mean and silly in his own sight. Yet he
reasoned that in what he said or did he had not committed
himself to her; and while he would regard her with all

kindness and affection, he could not allow her to be the mistress
of his being.

But of necessity Richard must see Miss Eyre frequently.
She was intimate at Willow Croft. She caressed the children;
she was always chirp, limber-hearted, and free, as
Munk wished anybody to be; she could tell Roxy what was
worn. Then she had ministered to Richard when he was
sick; she had that hold on his consideration which a communication
of sorrows creates; she sometimes attended the
Knuckle Lane meetings; she loathed and despised Clover;
she was, moreover, in a certain sense, poor and friendless,
— a dependent, an operative; and she appealed to the sympathies
of Richard by whatever lies in the case of those
who are sometimes deemed as belonging to a proscribed
class.

We call her poor. She was an intelligent and industrious
weaver, and could clear three and four dollars a week.

The next time Richard saw her, his manner was cool,
and a little sheepish; — she laughed at him. The second
time, she amused herself in endeavoring to rally him. The
third time, by following the creep-mouse-catch-'em precedent,
she brought him more nearly en rapport, as the
mesmerizers say, with herself.