The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858

–"Dear Jesus, can it be?
Wait we till all things go from us or e'er we go to thee?
Ay, sooth! We feel such strength in weal, thy love may seem
withstood:
But what are we in agony? Dumb, if we cry not 'God!'"

Behind the village I can see the blue hazy line of a far-distant horizon, as the valley opens in that direction. I know the sea lies there, and sometimes I fancy that mirage lifts its dark waters to my sight.

In a wooded nook on my right stands the little brown mill, with its huge wheel, and wide blue pond, and foamy waterfall. On that day I heard its drone, and saw the geese bathing, and throwing up the bright sparkling drops with their wings, until they fell like fountains.

On my left lay "a little lane serene," with stone fences half hid by blackberry-bushes—

–"A little lane serene,
Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroken snows.
Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green,
Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen
Than the plump wain at even
Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves."

I thought of those lines there and then, and they enhanced even the joy of Nature. They tinged her for me with the magic colors of poetry.

When I had thus scrutinized earth, I looked up to heaven. It had been so long shut from me by the network of the grove, that it was like escaping from confining toils, to look straight into Heaven's face, with nothing between, not even a cloud.

I have never seen a sweeter, calmer picture than that I gazed upon all the morning, and for which the two huge old cedars formed a rugged, but harmonious frame.

I have lived out of doors since. When it is cold, I am wrapped in a wadded robe Kate has made for me,—a capital thing, loose, and warm, and silky-soft. To an invalid with nerves all on edge, that is much. I never found out, until Kate enveloped me in its luxurious folds, what it was that rasped my feelings so, every morning, when I was dressed; I then knew it must have been my flashy woollen dressing-gown. I envy women their soft raiment, and I rather dread the day when I shall be compelled to wear coats again. (Let me cheat myself, if I can.)

III

May, 1855.

You wish to know more of Ben. I am glad of it. You shall be immediately gratified.

He is a true Scot, tall and strong and sandy-haired, with quick gray eyes, and a grave countenance, which relaxes only upon very great provocation.

Before I came here, he was known simply as a most careful, industrious, silent, saving machine, which cared not a jot for anybody in particular, but never wanted any spur to its own mechanical duty. It was never known to do a turn of work not legitimately its own, though mathematically exact in its proper office. But after I came here with my sister, a helpless cripple, we found out that the mathematical machine was a man, with a soft, beating heart. He was called upon to lift me from the carriage, and he did it as tenderly as a woman. He took me up as a mother lifts her child from the cradle, and I reposed passively in his strong arms, with a feeling of perfect security and ease.

From that day to this, Ben has been a most devoted friend to me. He watches for opportunities to do me kindnesses, and takes from his own sacred time to make me comforts. He has had me in his arms a hundred times, and carries me from bed to couch like a baby. I positively blush in writing this to you. You have known me to be a man for years, and here I am in arms again!

Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't like to recall his sufferings.

The first I knew of it was by his starting and changing color one day, when I was reading the news from China to Kate in the garden, he being engaged in tying up a rose-bush close by. Kate saw his confusion, and smiled. Ben, catching the expression of her face, looked inconceivably sheepish. He dropped his ball of twine, and was about to go away, but thinking better of it, he suddenly turned and said, with a grin and a blush,—

"Ye'll be telling on me, Miss Kathleen! so I'se be aforehond wi' ye, and let Mr. Charlie knaw the warst frae my ain confassion, if he will na grudge me a quarter hour."

I signified my wish to hear, and with much difficulty and many questions wrung from him his "confassion." Kate afterwards gave me her version, and the facts were these:—

He persuaded Kate to let him buy a pair of Shanghais.

"But don't do it unless you are sure of its being worth while," Kate charged him; "because I can't afford to be making expensive experiments."

Ben counted out upon his fingers the numberless advantages.

"First, the valie o' the eggs for sale, (mony ane had fetched a dollar,) forbye the ecawnomy in size for cooking, one shell handing the meat o' twa common eggs. Second, the size o' the chickens for table, each hen the weight o' a turkey. Third, for speculation. Let the neebors buy, and she could realize sixty dollar on the brood o' twal' chicks; for they fetched ten dollar the pair, and could be had for nae less onywheres. Every hen wad hae twa broods at the smallest."

Kate doubted, but handed over the money. The next day she was awaked from a nap on the parlor sofa by a most unearthly music. There was one bar of four notes, first and third accepted; bar second, a crescendo on a long swelled note, then a decrescendo equally long.

"Why," she cried, "is that our little bull-calf practising singing? I shall let Barnum know about him. He'll make my fortune!"

Ben knocked at the door, presented a radiant grin, and invited inspection of his Shanghais. Kate went with him to the cellar. There stood two feathered bipeds on their tip-toes, with their giraffe necks stretched up to my sister's swinging shelf where the cream and butter were kept. It spoke well for the size of their craws certainly, that, during the two minutes Ben was away, they had each devoured a "print" of butter, about half a pound!

"Saw ye ever the like o' thae birds, Miss Kathleen?" began Ben, proudly.

"My butter, my butter!" cried Kate.

Ben ran to the rescue, and having removed everything to the high shelf, he came back, saying,—

"It was na their faut. I tak shame for not minding that they are so gay tall. But did ye ever see the like o' yon rooster?"

Indeed, she never had! The frightful monster, with its bob-tail and boa-constrictor neck! But she said nothing.

Ben named them the Emperor and Empress. They were not to be allowed to walk with common fowls, and he soon had a large, airy house made for them. He watched these creatures with incessant devotion, and one morning he was beside himself with delight, for, by a most hideous roaring on the part of the Emperor, and a vigorous cackling, which Ben, very descriptively, called "scraughing," by the Empress, it was announced that she had laid an egg!

Etiquette required Kate to call and admire this promise of royal offspring, and she was surprised into genuine admiration when she saw the prodigy. Her nose had to lower its scornful turn, her lips to relax their skeptical twist. It was an egg indeed! Ben was nobly justified in his purchase. His step was light that day. Kate heard him singing, over and over again, a verse from an old song which he had brought with him from the land o' cakes:—

"I hae a hen wi' a happity leg,
(Lass, gin ye loe me, tell me noo,)
And ilka day she lays me an egg
(And I canna come ilka day to woo!)"

Wooing any lass would, just now, have been quite as secondary an affair with the singer as in the song,—a something par parenthèse.

But, alas! Ben's face was more dubious the next day, and before the week was over it was yard-long. The Empress, after that one great effort, laid no more eggs, but duly began her second duty, sitting. There was no doubt that she meant to have but one chick,—out of rivalry, perhaps, with the Pynchon hen. It was gratifying, perhaps, to have her so aristocratic, but it was not exactly profitable as a speculation.

"Ben," said Kate, dryly, "I don't know that that egg was wonderfully large, as it contained the whole brood!"

Poor Ben! That was not all. The clumsy, heavy Empress stepped upon her egg, and broke it in the second week of its existence; but, faithful to its memory, she refused to forego the duties of maternity, and would persist in staying on her nest. As the season advanced, Ben lost hope of the second brood he had counted upon. In short, his Empress had the legitimate "hen-fever," and it carried her off, though Ben tried numberless remedies in common use for vulgar fowls, such as pumping upon her, whirling her by one leg, tying red flannel to her tail, and so forth. Of course such indignities were fatal to royalty, and Ben gave up all hopes of a pure race of Shanghais.

The Emperor was then set at liberty, and for one short half-hour strutted like a giant-hero among the astounded hens. But no sooner did the former old cock—who had game blood in him, repute said—return from a distant excursion into the cornfields with his especial favorites about him, and behold the mighty majesty of the monster, than his pride and ire blazed up. He put his head low, ruffled out his long neck-feathers, his eyes winked and snapped fire with rage, he set out his wings, took a short run, and, throwing up his spurs with fury, struck the stupid, staring Emperor a blow under the ear which laid him low. Alas for royalty, opposed to force of will!

"And you had to pocket the loss, Kate?" I said.

"It was my gain," she replied. "Ben had always been dictatorial before; but after that, I had only to smile to remind him of his fallibility, and I have been mistress here ever since."

So far had I written when your welcome letter arrived. Kate found me this morning sighing over it, pen in hand, ready to reply. She put on her imperious look, and said she forbade my writing, if I grew gloomy over it. She feared my letters were only the outpourings of a disappointed spirit. Indulgence in grief she considered weak, foolish, unprincipled, and egotistical.

"I can't help being egotistical," I replied, "when I see no one, and am shut up in the 'little world of me,' as closely as mouse in trap. And with myself for a subject, what can my letters be but melancholy?"

"Anybody can write amusing letters, if they choose," said Kate, reckless both of fact and grammar.