The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864

"You'll be taken care of, the Angel says. Even they that hate you shall do you good. The mercy you have shown, Christ will show to you."

Having uttered these sentences at intervals, in a loud voice, the speaker gave a start, turned as if bewildered, and sat down again.

Not a word was spoken. A hush of awe suspended the breath of the listeners. Then a smile of fervent emotion lighted up like daybreak the negro's dark visage, and his joy broke forth in song. The others joined him, filling the house with the jubilee of their wild and mellow voices.

"A poor wayfaring man of grief
Hath often crossed me on my way,
And sued so humbly for relief
That I could never answer nay."

And so the fair fame of Gingerford, as we said before, was saved from blight. The beggar-boy awakes this Sunday morning, not in the blaze of Eternity, but in that dim nook of the domain of Time, Nigger Williams's hut. He made his couch, not on the freezing ground, but in a bunk of the low-roofed garret. His steaming clothes had been taken off, a dry shirt had been given him, and he had Joe for a bedfellow.

"Hug him tight, Joey dear!" said the old woman, as she carried away the candle. "Snug up close, and keep him warm!"

"I will!" cried Joe, as affectionate as he was roguish; and Fessenden's never slept better than he did that night, with the tempest singing his lullaby, and the arms of the loving negro boy about him.

In the morning he found his clothes ready to put on. They had been carefully dried; and the old woman had got up early and taken a few needful stitches in them.

"It's Sunday, granny," Creshy reminded her, to see what she would say.

"A'n't no use lett'n' sich holes as these 'ere go, if 't is Sunday!" replied the old woman. "Hope I never sh'll ketch you a doin' nuffin' wus! A'n't we told to help our neighbor's sheep out o' the ditch on the Lord's day? An' which is mos' consequence, I'd like to know, the neighbor's sheep, or the neighbor hisself?"

"But his clothes a'n't him," said Creshy.

"S'pose I do'no' that? But what's a sheep for, if 't a'n't for its wool to make the clo'es? Then, to look arter the sheep that makes the clo'es, and not look arter the clo'es arter they're made, that's a mis'ble notion!"

"But you can mend the clothes any day."

"Could I mend 'em yis'day, when I didn't have 'em to mend? or las' night, when they was wringin' wet? Le' me alone, now, with your nonsense!"

"But you can mend them to-morrow," said the mischievous girl, delighted to puzzle her grandmother.

"And let that poor lorn chile go in rags over Sunday, freezin' cold weather like this? Guess I a'n't so onfeelin,'—an' you a'n't nuther, for all you like to tease your ole granny so! Bless the chile, seems to me he's jest gwine to bring us good luck. I feel as though the Angel of the Lord did ra'ly come into the house with him las' night! Wish I had somefin' ra'l good for him for his breakfas' now! He'll be dreffle hungry, that's sartin. Make a rousin' good big Johnny-cake, mammy; and, Creshy, you stop botherin', and slice up them 'ere taters for fryin'."

Soon the odor of the cooking stole up into the garret. Fessenden's snuffed it with delighted senses. The feeling of his garments dry and whole pleased him mightily. He heard the call to breakfast; and laughing and rubbing his eyes, he followed Joe down the dark, uncertain footing of the stairs.

The family was already huddled about the table. But room was reserved for their guest, and at his appearance the old patriarch rose smilingly from his seat, pulled off his cap, which it seemed he always wore, and shook hands with him, with the usual hospitable greeting.

"Sarvant, Sah! Welcome, Sah!"

Fessenden's was given a seat by his side. And the old woman piled his plate with good things. And he ate, and was filled. For he was by no means dainty, and had not, simple soul! the least prejudice against color.

And he was happy. The friendly black faces around him,—the cheerful, sympathetic, rich-toned voices,—the motherly kindness of the old woman,—the exquisite smiling politeness of the old man, who got up and shook hands with him, on an average, every half-hour,—the Bible-reading,—the singing,—the praying,—the elegance and condescension of Gentleman Bill,—the pleasant looks and words of the laughing-eyed girls,—and the irrepressible merriment of Joe, made that a golden Sabbath in the lad's life.

Alas that it should come to this! Associate with black folks! how shocking! What if he was a—Fessenden's? wasn't he white? Where were those finer tastes and instincts which make you and me shrink from persons of color? Pity they had not been properly developed in him! Pity he should stoop so low as to eat and sleep with niggers, and feel grateful! He rolls and tumbles in mad frolic with Joe on the garret-floor, and plays horse with him. He suffers his hair to be combed by the girls, and actually experiences pleasure at the touch of their gentle hands, and feels a vague wondering joy when they praise his smooth flaxen locks. In a word, he is so weak as to wish that good Mr. Williams was his father, and this delightful hut his home!

And so he spends his Sunday. The family does not attend public worship. They used to, when the old meeting-house was standing, and the old minister was alive. But they do not feel at ease in the new edifice, and the smart young preacher is too smart for them altogether. His rhetoric is like the cold carving and frescos,—very fine, very admirable, no doubt; but it has no warmth in it for them; it is foreign to their common daily lives; it comes not near the hopes and fears and sufferings of their humble hearts. Here religion, which too long suffered abasement, is exalted. It is highly respectable. It shows culture; it has the tone of society. It is worth while coming hither of a Sunday morning, if only to hear the organ and see the fashions. Yet it can hardly be expected that such creatures as the Williamses should appreciate the privilege of hearing and beholding from the inclosure which has been properly set off for their class,—the colored people's pew.

But Fessendon's might have done better, one would say, than to stay at home with them. Why didn't he go to church, and be somebody? He would not have been put into the niggers' pew. As for his clothes, which might have been objected to by worldly people, who would have thought of them, or of anything else but his immortal soul, in the house of God? Of course, there were no respecters of persons there,—none to say to a rich Frisbie, or an eloquent Gingerford, "Sit thou, here, in a good place," and to a ragged Fessenden's, "Stand thou there."

But perhaps the less said on the subject the better. Pass over that golden Sunday in the lad's life. Alas, when will he ever have such another? For here it is Monday morning, and the house is to be torn down.

There seems to be no mistake about it. Mr. Frisbie has come over early, driven in his light open carriage by his man Stephen, to see that the niggers are out. And yonder come the workmen, to commence the work of demolition.

But the niggers are not out; not an article of furniture has been removed.

"You see, Sir,"—Mr. Williams calmly represents the case to his landlord, as he sits in his carriage,—"it has been impossible. We shall certainly go, just as soon as we can get another house anywhere in town"—

"I don't want you to get another house in town," interrupts the full-blooded, red-faced Frisbie. "We have had enough of you. You have had fair warning. Now out with your traps, and off with you!"

"I trust, at least, Sir, you will give us another week"—

"Not an hour!"

"One day," remonstrates the mild negro; "I don't think you will refuse us that."

"Not a minute!" exclaims the firm Frisbie. "I've borne with you long enough. Fact is, we have got tired of niggers in this town. I bought the house with you in it, or you never would have got in. Now it is coming down. Call out your folks, and save your stuff, if you're going to.—Good morning, Adsly," to the master carpenter. "Go to work with your fellows. Guess they'll be glad to get out by the time you've ripped the roof off."

Mr. Williams retires, disheartened, his visage surcharged with trouble. For this wretched dwelling was his home, and dear to him. It was the centre of his world. Around it all the humble hopes and pleasures of the man had clustered for years. When weary with the long day's heavy toil, here he had found rest. To this spot his spirit, sorrow-laden, had ever turned with gratitude and yearning. And here he had found shelter, here he had found love and comfort, the lonely, despised man. Even care and grief had contributed to strengthen the hold of his heart upon this soil. Here had died the only child he had ever lost; and in the old burying-ground, over the hill yonder, it was buried. Under this mean roof he had laid his sorrows before the Lord, he had wrestled with the Lord in prayer, and his burdens had been taken from him, and light and gladness had been poured upon his soul. Oh, ye proud! do you think that happiness dwells only in high places, or that these lowly homes are not dear to the poor?

But now this sole haven of the negro and his family was to be destroyed. Cruel cold blew the December wind, that wintry morning. And the gusts of the landlord's temper were equally pitiless.

HEAD-QUARTERS OF BEER-DRINKING

Besides the four elements known to us as such, namely, air, fire, earth, and water, there is a liquid substance not entirely unknown in our country, which, in the kingdom of Bavaria, is sometimes called the fifth element, under the specific name of beer. It is true, that, where this extra element is in such repute, some of the others suffer depreciation, and especially is this true of water, though this latter is still occasionally used both as a beverage and in purifying processes; and there is, too, a tradition, which these inland people have little opportunity of verifying, that it has sometimes been exclusively used for purposes of navigation, and they are aware, that, if at any time they should decide to emigrate to America, they might have occasion to test on a large scale both its utility and its perils for this purpose. The centre of gravity of this fifth element seems to be in the city of Munich, the capital of the kingdom. People in this country who have heard much of lager-beer, and seen a little of its use as introduced into our land from Germany, may, perhaps, suppose that it is equally distributed over all that extensive region known by this name. This is, however, an error. Just as our atmosphere becomes ever less dense according to its distance from the earth's centre of gravity, so this fifth element, as one retires farther from the city of Munich.

It would be an interesting inquiry for the medical man, who seeks to enlarge his knowledge of the vis medicatrix Naturæ, for the philanthropist, who would stimulate or increase the means of human happiness, and remove or diminish those of human misery, and even for the statistician, alike indifferent to both: Why do particular articles of diet and beverage concentrate their use so much in particular climates, lands, and localities? Within certain limits the question is easy. The inhabitant of the tropics lives on the bread-fruit, the plantain, the orange, the fig, and the date. They grow around him, drop as it were into his mouth, and are just what he needs to allay his hunger and support his nature. The Greenlanders and the Esquimaux of Labrador eat the flesh of bears, reindeer, and seals, and even drink their fat by the quart. Fruits, if they were to be had, would not meet their wants, and Providence has ordered accordingly. He of the tropics, in addition to the external heat, needs but the mild and gentle fire generated by the combustion of his native fruits, to keep his life-fluid in action; while he of the frigid zones must be kept in life and motion by rousing fires of seal's fat. Temperate latitudes produce most fruits, and all the cereals and animals used for food; but Nature nowhere gives us these in the shape of plum-puddings and pastries, or of beer and alcoholic drinks. The combinations and commutations must be manufactured. But does an impulse in man, like the instinct of the bee, lead him to make just what he needs in his particular climate? Does the Bavarian take to beer as the bee to honey? Does instinct or appetite in general shape itself to climate and other outward circumstances? This is but partly true. As Nature has distributed noxious vegetable and animal substances through land and sea, which must be avoided, so man may not pitch or pour indiscriminately into his stomach whatever substance may be cooked or liquid distilled and offered to him, and we are thrown back upon the direct test of their innocent or noxious properties, with full responsibility of action; but still I have a profound conviction that all such general production of the chief articles of food and drink has its origin in some deeply felt necessity of human nature in their particular localities;—the people may be on the wrong track in their attempts to provide for such necessities, but that these are felt and are the stimulus to the production is beyond doubt.

Allowing for the changes wrought by time and cultivation, we can still perceive the truth of what Tacitus wrote of Germany almost two thousand years ago:—"The land, though somewhat varied in aspect, is in the main deformed with dismal forests and foul marshes. The part next to Gaul is wetter, and that next to Pannonia and Noricum higher and more windy. It is sufficiently productive, but not adapted to fruit-trees." The whole country lies in a high latitude,—Munich, though in the southern part, being forty-eight degrees North. No large city on the continent lies at such an elevation,—about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the Adriatic. In the midst of a vast plain, it is exposed to all winds. Its site and the surrounding country are a great gravel-bed, hundreds of feet thick, a deposit from the Alps, spurs of which are within thirty miles on the south, subjecting the whole region to sudden changes of weather ranging in a few hours through many degrees of Fahrenheit. The air is raw and chilly, and although many parts of Germany have since the days of Tacitus developed an adaptation to the vine and other fruits, none flourish in the neighborhood of Munich. The whole country suffers from deficiency of nourishing and stimulating food. They may not themselves know it, but this is true of the peasants who are best to do in the world. Of the peasantry of Upper Bavaria, some have meat five times in the year, on their chief holidays,—namely, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Whitsuntide, Church-Consecration, and Christmas; some have it on but two of these days, and some only at Christmas. The exceptions may be many, and the large cities are quite exceptional, but the change is of late introduction. When people must labor upon such a diet, they feel the lack of something; but the Bavarians have been too long in this case to think of crying, like Israel of old in the wilderness, after having left the abundance of Egypt, "Who shall give us flesh to eat?"—they attempt rather to allay the gnawings at their stomachs by potations of beer, and the appetite grows by what it feeds on.

It is plausibly maintained that the climate of this particular locality creates an actual necessity for the use of this beverage. Often, during the earlier part of my residence there, I was besought by friends, with manifestation of deepest concern, to use beer instead of water, with the remark that the climate made this a necessary measure of security against the prevalent typhus and typhoid fevers: a conviction which seems to be deeply seated in the minds of the people.

Aside from all this, there is an almost total want of the pleasant beverages used in our families. Tea is as good as unknown in Old Bavaria, its use being confined to those who have been in England, or have learned it of the English, and not one woman in twenty thousand can prepare it. Let the word tea be erased from our vocabulary, and from our minds all the cheerful associations which it awakens, and there passes from our hearts none can tell how much of that which we most fondly cherish there,—the family of both sexes, and occasionally some neighbors and friends, seated around the table,—the gently stimulating narcotic diffusing a charm over the whole social being, and communicating itself to the vocal machinery. Fanatical reformers have proclaimed its injurious effects; and it may have such; but they are a thousand times compensated by its value as a bond of union to the elements of the domestic circle. The tea-table has been the butt of many a jest and sarcasm, as a fountain of gossip and slander. This may be true; but the security it furnishes against the dissipation of the elements of the social circle outweighs thousands of such trifles, and we half suspect that this objection was originated, and is mischievously propagated, by those who are already developing a love for other beverages. If Cowper, with the "sofa" assigned as his subject, could sing so beautifully of all things social and domestic, what might he not have done with the tea-table—the rallying-point of social life to so many who never had a sofa—for his theme?

From the general use of coffee in the cities and large towns of Germany, we have inferred its general use by the peasantry; but even this is quite limited, in Upper Bavaria at least; it is found only where the influence of city-life has penetrated. Sometimes a peasant woman has a little hid in her chest, from which she stealthily prepares and drinks a cup when her husband is away; but it is little used. This article was brought into Western Europe in the seventeenth century, and found beer in possession of Germany. The monks are said to have preached against the use of coffee, as anticipating, by the dense black smoke which arose from burning it, the "fumes of hell." It came from Turkey, and at that day the Turk was still the hereditary dread of all the peoples on the middle and upper Danube. He was next thing to the Devil; and what came direct from the former could be but recent from the latter.

Their beloved beer could not be traced so directly to an origin in the nether world. The German tribes, as far back as history or tradition reports them, seem to have loved this quieting beverage. Traces of their coming together as now for banqueting purposes, under the shade of Germany's primeval forests, are still found in history and historical traditions. There is one fact which Americans, so accustomed to rapid transformations of society by migration, immigration, and intermixture of races, can scarcely comprehend, even when they know it as a fact: it is the persistency with which national traits adhere to a people in an old country, through generations and decades of generations and of centuries, withstanding the shock of revolution both in government and religion. Tacitus says of these people:—"At meals, they sit every man upon a seat by himself and at a separate table. Arising, they proceed armed to their business; and they go armed also to their banquets. It is no reproach to them to continue day and night drinking. Their drink is fermented from barley or wheat into a certain resemblance of wine. Their food is simple,—wild fruits, fresh game, or coagulated milk. They satisfy hunger without formality and without delicacies. In regard to thirst they do not exercise this moderation. Indulge their appetites by giving them all they desire, and you may conquer them by their vices not less easily than by arms."

Viewing, then, these people of Upper Bavaria, and of Munich in particular, in their cold, raw air,—in their supposed exposure to typhus and typhoid fevers,—deficiency of good food,—the want of the domestic circle as cemented in our country over other beverages,—the national abstemiousness in regard to food, and the addictedness to beer for thousands of years past,—and we have a somewhat rational explanation of the springing-up and development into such monstrous proportions of the manufacture and consumption of this article. Of the many it may be said,—

"They drink their simple beverage with a gust,
And feast upon an onion and a crust."

Bavaria, not including the Rhenish Palatinate, uses over six million bushels of barley, and upwards of seven million pounds of hops, annually, in its breweries, making over eight million eimers, that is, about five million barrels of beer. But nearly half the kingdom is wine-growing, and uses comparatively little beer; so that this is mainly consumed in the other half, that is, by about three millions of people. At an average price of three and a half cents per quart, there is consumed in the kingdom fifty million florins, or over twenty million dollars, annually, in this beverage. Both manufacture and consumption have their head-quarters in Munich. The quantity manufactured in this city alone in 1856-7 was nine hundred and fifty thousand eimers, or about five hundred and seventy thousand barrels, being nearly five barrels a head for the whole population, men, women, and children. Allowing for the amount exported, or sent out of the city, there remains something like four barrels to each person. This is one quart, or four of our common table-glasses, per day. But some drink none, others little; a man is scarcely reckoned with real beer-drinkers until he drinks six masses,—twenty-four of our common tumblers; ten masses are not uncommon; twenty to thirty masses—eighty to one hundred and twenty of our dinner-glasses—are drunk by some, and on a wager even much more. The sick man whose physician prescribed for him a quart of herb-tea as the only thing that would save him, and who replied that he was gone, then, for he held but a pint, was no Bavarian; for the most modest Bavarian girl would not feel alarmed in regard to her capacity, if ordered to drink a gallon,—certainly not, if the liquid were beer.

The aggregate labor performed in this branch of popular industry is thus seen at a glance. But how is this done, and by whom? What is the noise or noiselessness with which such torrents of this foaming liquid rush daily through the channels of human bodies made originally too small to admit half the quantity? What are the final results upon body, mind, and heart of the present and future of the race? Does government encourage, stimulate, control, and turn to account this national appetite? These questions invite, and will well repay, a few moments' attention.

I once heard a college student announce as the text of his oration Lindley Murray's well-known definition of the verb,—a word which signifies "to be, to do, or to suffer"; and he followed up his announcement by a most beautiful and conclusive argument to show that this definition describes with equal accuracy three classes of men into which the whole world may be divided: a class who have no purpose in life but simply "to be"; an active class, whose mission is "to do," to which they bend all their energies; and a passive class, who merely "suffer" themselves to be employed as the tools of the men of action. Whether he would have modified his statement, had he known something of Bavarian beer-drinkers, I do not know; for, although these belong, doubtless, in general, to the class of men which he designated as having no purpose but simply "to be," yet they certainly have a decided preference as to the means of their being, which must be beer; they have activity enough to get where this can be obtained, and to handle the needed quantity; and the man who holds and bears about fifteen or twenty quarts a day must have no small share of the grace of passive endurance.