The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
and so she put ahead, and made us follow her."
Again, in an agony of impatience, Ducklow demanded to know where the bonds were at that moment.
"If Taddy'll give me back the marbles," began Master Dick.
"That'll do!" said Miss Beswick, silencing him with a gesture. "Reuben will give you twenty marbles; for I believe you said they was Reuben's bonds, Mr. Ducklow?"
"Yes, that is"–stammered the adopted father.
"Eventooally," struck in the adopted mother.
"Now look here! What am I to understand? Be they Reuben's bonds, or be they not? That's the question!" And there was that in Miss Beswick's look which said, "If they are not Reuben's, then your eyes shall never behold them more!"
"Of course they're Reuben's!" "We intended all the while"–"His benefit"–"To do jest what he pleases with 'em," chorused Pa and Ma Ducklow.
"Wal! now it's understood! Here, Reuben, are your cowpon bonds!"
And Miss Beswick, drawing them from her bosom, placed the precious documents, with formal politeness, in the glad soldier's agitated hands.
"Glory!" cried Reuben, assuring himself that they were genuine and real. "Sophrony, you've got a home! Ruby, Carrie, you've got a home! Miss Beswick! you angel from the skies! order a bushel and a half of marbles for Dick, and have the bill sent to me! Oh, Pa Ducklow! you never did a nobler or more generous thing in your life. These will lift the mortgage, and leave me a nest-egg besides. Then when I get my back pay, and my pension, and my health again, we shall be independent."
And the soldier, overcome by his feelings, sank back in the arms of his wife.
"We always told you we'd do well by ye, you remember?" said the Ducklows, triumphantly.
The news went abroad. Again congratulations poured in upon the returned volunteer. Everybody rejoiced in his good fortune,—especially certain rich ones who had been dreading to see Miss Beswick come round with her proposed subscription-paper.
Among the rest, the Ducklows rejoiced not the least; for selfishness was with them, as it is with many, rather a thing of habit than a fault of the heart. The catastrophe of the bonds broke up that life-long habit, and revealed good hearts underneath. The consciousness of having done an act of justice, although by accident, proved very sweet to them: it was really a fresh sensation; and Reuben and his dear little family, saved from ruin and distress, happy, thankful, glad, was a sight to their old eyes such as they had never witnessed before. Not gold itself, in any quantity, at the highest premium, could have given them so much satisfaction; and as for coupon bonds, they are not to be mentioned in the comparison.
"Won't you do well by me some time, too?" teased little Taddy, who overheard his adopted parents congratulating themselves on having acted so generously by Reuben. "I don't care for no cowpen bonds, but I do want a new drum!"
"Yes, yes, my son!" said Ducklow, patting the boy's shoulder.
And the drum was bought.
Taddy was delighted. But he did not know what made the Ducklows so much happier, so much gentler and kinder, than formerly. Do you?
THE AUTHOR OF "SAUL." 1
We are not one of those who believe that the manifestation of any native, vigorous faculty of the mind is dependent upon circumstances. It is true that education, in its largest sense, modifies development; but it cannot, to any serious extent, add to, or take from, the power to be developed. In the lack of encouragement and contemporary appreciation, certain of the finer faculties may not give forth their full and perfect fragrance; but the rose is always seen to be a rose, though never a bud come to flower. The "mute, inglorious Milton" is a pleasant poetic fiction. Against the "hands that the rod of empire might have swayed" we have nothing to object, knowing to what sort of hands the said rod has so often been intrusted.
John Howard Payne once read to us—and it was something of an infliction—a long manuscript on "The Neglected Geniuses of America,"—a work which only death, we suspect, prevented him from giving to the world. There was not one name in the list which had ever before reached our ears. Nicholas Blauvelt and William Phillips and a number of other utterly forgotten rhymesters were described and eulogized at length, the quoted specimens of their poetry proving all the while their admirable right to the oblivion which Mr. Payne deprecated. They were men of culture, some of them wealthy, and we could detect no lack of opportunity in the story of their lives. Had they been mechanics, they would have planed boards and laid bricks from youth to age. The Ayrshire ploughman and the Bedford tinker were made of other stuff. Our inference then was, and still is, that unacknowledged (or at least unmanifested) genius is no genius at all, and that the lack of sympathy which many young authors so bitterly lament is a necessary test of their fitness for their assumed vocation.
Gerald Massey is one of the most recent instances of the certainty with which a poetic faculty by no means of the highest order will enforce its own development, under seemingly fatal discouragements. The author of "Saul" is a better illustration of the same fact; for, although, in our ignorance of the circumstances of his early life, we are unable to affirm what particular difficulties he had to encounter, we know how long he was obliged to wait for the first word of recognition, and to what heights he aspired in the course of many long and solitary years.
The existence of "Saul" was first made known to the world by an article in the "North British Review," in the year 1858, when the author had already attained his forty-second year. The fact that the work was published in Montreal called some attention to it on this side of the Atlantic, and a few critical notices appeared in our literary periodicals. It is still, however, comparatively unknown; and those into whose hands it may have fallen are, doubtless, ignorant of the author's name and history. An outline of the latter, so far as we have been able to ascertain its features, will help the reader to a more intelligent judgment, when we come to discuss the author's claim to a place in literature.
Charles Heavysege was born in Liverpool, England, in the year 1816. We know nothing in regard to his parents, except that they were poor, yet able to send their son to an ordinary school. His passion for reading, especially such the poetry as fell into his hands, showed itself while he was yet a child. Milton seems to have been the first author who made a profound impression upon his mind; but it is also reported that the schoolmaster once indignantly snatched Gray's "Elegy" from his hand, because he so frequently selected that poem for his reading-lesson. Somewhat later, he saw "Macbeth" performed, and was immediately seized with the ambition to become an actor,—a profession for which few persons could be less qualified. The impression produced by this tragedy, combined with the strict religious training which he appears to have received, undoubtedly fixed the character and manner of his subsequent literary efforts.
There are but few other facts of his life which we can state with certainty. His chances of education were evidently very scanty, for he must have left school while yet a boy, in order to learn his trade,—that of a machinist. He had thenceforth little time and less opportunity for literary culture. His reading was desultory, and the poetic faculty, expending itself on whatever subjects came to hand, produced great quantities of manuscripts, which were destroyed almost as soon as written. The idea of publishing them does not seem to have presented itself to his mind. Either his life must have been devoid of every form of intellectual sympathy, or there was some external impediment formidable enough to keep down that ambition which always co-exists with the creative power.
In the year 1843 he married, and in 1853 emigrated to Canada, and settled in Montreal. Even here his literary labor was at first performed in secrecy; he was nearly forty years old before a line from his pen appeared in type. He found employment in a machine-shop, and it was only very gradually—probably after much doubt and hesitation—that he came to the determination to subject his private creations to the ordeal of print. His first venture was a poem in blank verse, the title of which we have been unable to ascertain. A few copies were printed anonymously and distributed among personal friends. It was a premature birth, which never knew a moment's life, and the father of it would now be the last person to attempt a resuscitation.
Soon afterwards appeared—also