Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

Sleep lulled by many a dream
Of sylvan sounds that woo the ear in vain,
While still thy numbers seem
To voice the pain of bliss, the bliss of pain.

    MARY C. PECKHAM.

A FOREST BEAUTY

Last spring, or possibly it was early in June, I was walking, in company with an intelligent farmer, through a bit of heavy forest that bordered some fields of corn and wheat, when a golden, flame-like gleam from the midst of the last year's leaves and twigs on the ground at my feet attracted my sight. I stooped and picked up a large fragment of a flower of the Liriodendron Tulipifera which had been let fall by some foraging squirrel from the dark-green and fragrant top of the giant tree nearest us. Strange to say, my farmer friend, who owned the rich Indiana soil in which the tree grew, did not know, until I told him, that the "poplar," as he called the tulip-tree, bears flowers. For twenty years he had owned this farm, during which time he had cut down acres of forest for rails and lumber, without ever having discovered the gorgeous blossom which to me is the finest mass of form and color to be seen in our American woods. As I had a commission from an artist to procure a spray of these blooms for her, I at once began to search the tree-top with my eyes. The bole, or stem, rose sixty feet, tapering but slightly, to where some heavy and gnarled limbs put forth, their extremities lost in masses of peculiarly dark, rich foliage. At first I could distinguish no flowers, but at length here and there a suppressed glow of orange shot with a redder tinge showed through the dusky gloom of the leaves. Lo! there they were, hundreds of them, over three inches in diameter, bold, gaudy, rich, the best possible examples of nature's pristine exuberance of force and color. Two gray squirrels were frisking about among the highest sprays, and it was my good fortune that my friend carried on his shoulder a forty-four-calibre rifle; for, though it was death to the nimble little animals, it proved to be the instrument with which I procured my coveted flowers. It suggested the probability that, if bullets could fetch down squirrels from that tree-top, they might also serve to clip off and let fall some of the finest clusters or sprays of tulip. The experiment was tried, with excellent result. I made the little artist glad with some of the grandest specimens I have ever seen.

The tulip-tree is of such colossal size and it branches so high above ground that it is little wonder few persons, even of those most used to the woods, ever see its bloom, which is commonly enveloped in a mass of large, dark leaves. These leaves are peculiarly outlined, having short lobes at the sides and a truncated end, while the stem is slender, long, and wire-like. The flower has six petals and three transparent sepals. In its centre rises a pale-green cone surrounded by from eighteen to thirty stamens. Sap-green, yellow of various shades, orange-vermilion, and vague traces of some inimitable scarlet, are the colors curiously blended together within and without the grand cup-shaped corolla. It is Edgar Fawcett who draws an exquisite poetic parallel between the oriole and the tulip,—albeit he evidently did not mean the flower of our Liriodendron, which is nearer the oriole colors. The association of the bird with the flower goes further than color, too; for the tulip-tree is a favorite haunt of the orioles. Audubon, in the plates of his great ornithological work, recognizes this by sketching the bird and some rather flat and weak tulip-sprays together on the same sheet. I have fancied that nature in some way favors this massing of colors by placing the food of certain birds where their plumage will show to best advantage on the one hand, or serve to render them invisible, on the other, while they are feeding. The golden-winged woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, the red-bellied woodpecker, and that grand bird the pileated woodpecker, all seem to prefer the tulip-tree for their nesting-place, pecking their holes into the rotten boughs, sometimes even piercing an outer rim of the fragrant green wood in order to reach a hollow place. I remember, when I was a boy, lying in a dark old wood in Kentucky and watching a pileated woodpecker at work on a dead tulip-bough that seemed to afford a great number of dainty morsels of food. There were streaks of hard wood through the rotten, and whenever his great horny beak struck one of these it would sound as loud and clear as the blow of a carpenter's hammer. This fine bird is almost extinct now, having totally disappeared from nine-tenths of the area of its former habitat. I never see a tulip-tree without recollecting the wild, strangely-hilarious cry of the Hylotomus pileatus; and I cannot help associating the giant bloom, its strength of form and vigor of color, with the scarlet crest and king-like bearing of the bird. The big trees of California excepted, our tulip-bearing Liriodendron is the largest growth of the North-American forests; for, while the plane-tree and the liquidambar-(sweet-gum) tree sometimes measure more in diameter near the ground, they are usually hollow, and consequently bulged there, while the tulip springs boldly out of the ground a solid shaft of clear, clean, and sweetly-fragrant wood, sixty or seventy feet of the bole being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first branch, fifty-eight feet from the root.

In nearly all the Western and Southern States the tulip is generally called poplar, and the lumber manufactured from it goes by the same name, while in the East it is known as white-wood. The bark is very thick and cork-like, exhaling an odor peculiarly pungent and agreeable; the buds and tender twigs in the spring have a taste entirely individual and unique, very pleasant to some persons, but quite repellent to others. Gray squirrels and the young of the fox-squirrel eat the buds and flowers as well as the cone-shaped fruit. Humming-birds and bumble-bees in the blossoming-time make a dreamy booming among the shadowy sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew, may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search of which large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of the largest tulip-trees, patiently toiling for two or three hours over the rough bark, among the bewildering wrinkles of which it is, a wonder how the way is kept with such unerring certainty. I have calculated that in making such a journey the ant does what is equivalent to a man's pedestrian tour from New York City to the Adirondacks by the roughest route, and all for a smack of wild honey! But the ant makes his long excursion with neither alpenstock nor luncheon, and without sleeping or even resting on the way.

The tulip-tree grows best in warm loam in which there is a mixture of sand and vegetable mould superposed on clay and gravel. About its roots you may find the lady-slipper and the dog-tooth violet, each in its season. Its bark often bears the rarest lichens, and, near the ground, short green moss as soft and thick as velvet. The poison-ivy and the beautiful Virginia creeper like to clamber up the rough trunk, sometimes clothing the huge tree from foot to top in a mantle of brown feelers and glossy leaves. Seen at a distance, the tulip-tree and the black-walnut-tree look very much alike; but upon approaching them the superior symmetry and beauty of the former are at once discovered. The leaves of the walnut are gracefully arranged, but they admit too much light; while the tulip presents grand masses of dense foliage upheld by knotty, big-veined branches, the perfect embodiment of vigor.

In the days of bee-hunting in the West, I may safely say that a majority of bee-trees were tulips. I have found two of these wild Hyblas since I began my studies for this paper; but the trees have become so valuable that the bees are left unmolested with their humming and their honey. It seems that no more appropriate place for a nest of these wild nectar-brewers could be chosen than the hollow bough of a giant tulip,—a den whose door is curtained with leaves and washed round with odorous airs, where the superb flowers, with their wealth of golden pollen and racy sweets, blaze out from the cool shadows above and beneath. But the sly old 'coon, that miniature Bruin of our Western woods, is a great lover of honey, and not at all a respecter of the rights of wild bees. He is tireless in his efforts to reach every deposit of waxy comb and amber distillation within the range of his keen power of scent. The only honey that escapes him is that in a hollow too small for him to enter and too deep for his fore-paws to reach the bottom.

Poe, in his story of the Gold-Bug, falls into one of his characteristic errors of conscience. The purposes of his plot required that a very large and tall tree should be climbed, and, to be picturesque, a tulip was chosen. But, in order to give a truthful air to the story, the following minutely incorrect description is given: "In youth the tulip-tree, or Liriodendron Tulipiferum, the most magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but in its riper age the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem" The italics are mine, and the sentence italicized contains an unblushing libel upon the most beautiful of all trees. Short branches never "appear on the stems" of old tulip-trees. The bark, however, does grow rough and deeply seamed with age. I have seen pieces of it six inches thick, which, when cut, showed a fine grain with cloudy waves of rich brown color, not unlike the darkest mahogany. But Poe, no matter how unconscionable his methods of art, had the true artistic judgment, and he made the tulip-tree serve a picturesque turn in the building of his fascinating story; though one would have had more confidence in his descriptions of foliage if it had been May instead of November.

The growth of the tulip-tree, under favorable circumstances, is strong and rapid, and, when not crowded or shaded by older trees, it begins flowering when from eighteen to twenty-five years old. The blooming-season, according to the exigences of weather, begins from May 20 to June 10 in Indiana, and lasts about a week. The fruit following the flower is a cone an inch and a half long and nearly an inch in diameter at the base, of a greenish—yellow color, very pungent and odorous, and full of germs like those of a pine-cone. The tree is easily grown from the seed. Its roots are long, flexible, and tough, and when young are pale yellow and of bitterish taste, but slightly flavored with the stronger tulip individuality which characterizes the juice and sap of the buds and the bark of the twigs. The leaves, as I have said, are dark and rich, but their shape and color are not the half of their beauty. There is a charm in their motion, be the wind ever so light, that is indescribable. The rustle they make is not "sad" or "uncertain," but cheerful and forceful. The garments of some young giantess, such as Baudelaire sings of, might make that rustling as she would run past one in a land of colossal persons and things.

I have been surprised to find so little about the tulip-tree in our literature. Our writers of prose and verse have not spared the magnolia of the South, which is far inferior, both tree and flower, to our gaudy, flaunting giantess of the West. Indeed, if I were an aesthete, and were looking about me for a flower typical of a robust and perfect sentiment of art, I should greedily seize upon the bloom of the tulip-tree. What a "craze" for tulip borders and screens, tulip wallpapers and tulip panel-carvings, I would set going in America! The colors, old gold, orange, vermilion, and green,—the forms, gentle curves and classical truncations, and all new and American, with a woodsy freshness and fragrance in them. The leaves and flowers of the tulip-tree are so simple and strong of outline that they need not be conventionalized for decorative purposes. During the process of growth the leaves often take on accidental shapes well suited to the variations required by the designer. A wise artist, going into the woods to educate himself up to the level of the tulip, could not fail to fill his sketch-books with studies of the birds that haunt the tree, and especially such brilliant ones as the red tanager, the five or six species of woodpecker, the orioles, and the yellow-throated warbler. The Japanese artists give us wonderful instances of the harmony between birds, flowers, and foliage; not direct instances, it is true, but rather suggested ones, from which large lessons might be learned by him who would carry the thought into our woods with him in the light of a pure and safely-educated taste. Take, for instance, the yellow-bellied woodpecker, with its red fore-top and throat, its black and white lines, and its bright eyes, together with its pale yellow shading of back and belly, and how well it would "work in" with the tulip-leaves and flowers! Even its bill and feet harmonize perfectly with the bark of the older twigs. So the golden-wing, the tanager, and the orioles would bear their colors harmoniously into any successful tulip design.

South of the Alleghany Mountains I have not found as fine specimens of this tree as I have in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Everywhere the saw-mills are fast making sad havoc. The walnut and the tulip are soon to be no more as "trees with the trees in the forest." Those growing in the almost inaccessible "pockets" of the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains may linger for a half-century yet, but eventually all will be gone from wherever a man and a saw can reach them.

The oak of England and the pine of Norway are not more typical than the tulip-tree. The symmetry, vigor, and rich colors of our tree might represent the force, freedom, and beauty of our government and our social influences. If the American eagle is the bird of freedom, the tulip is the tree of liberty,—strong, fragrant, giant-flowered, flaunting, defiant, yet dignified and steadfast.

A very intelligent old man, who in his youth was a great bear- and panther-hunter, has often told me how the black bear and the tawny catamount used to choose the ample "forks" of the tulip-tree for their retreats when pursued by his dogs. The raccoon has superseded the larger game, and it was but a few weeks ago that I found one lying, like a striped, fluffy ball of fur, in a crotch ninety feet above ground. "Our white-wood" lumber has grown so valuable that no land-owner will allow the trees to be cut by the hunter, and hence the old-fashioned 'coon-hunt has fallen among the things of the past, for it seems that the 'coon is quite wise enough to choose for the place of his indwelling the costliest tulip of the woods. I have already casually mentioned the fact that the tulip-tree's bloom is scarcely known to exist by even intelligent and well-informed Americans. Every one has heard of the mimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of the tulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesque flower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and Middle States. I have not been able to formulate a good reason for this. Every one whose attention is called to the flower at once goes into raptures over its wild beauty and force of coloring, and wonders why poems have not been written about it and legends built upon it. It is a grander bloom than that which once, under the same name, nearly bankrupted kingdoms, though it cannot be kept in pots and greenhouses. Its colors are, like the idiosyncrasies of genius, as inimitable as they are fascinating and elusive. Audubon was something of an artist, but his tulip-blooms are utter failures. He could color an oriole, but not the corolla of this queen of the woods. The most sympathetic and experienced water-colorist will find himself at fault with those amber-rose, orange-vermilion blushes, and those tender cloudings of yellow and green. The stiff yet sensitive and fragile petals, the transparent sepals, with their watery shades and delicate washing of olive-green, the strong stamens and peculiarly marked central cone, are scarcely less difficult. All the colors elude and mock the eager artist. While the gamut of promising tints is being run, he looks, and, lo! the grand tulip has shrivelled and faded. Again and again a fresh spray is fetched in, but when the blooming-season is over he is still balked and dissatisfied. The wild, Diana-like purity and the half-savage, half-æsthetic grace have not wholly escaped him, but the color,—ah I there is the disappointment.

I have always nursed a fancy that there is something essential to perfect health in the bitters and sweets of buds and roots and gums and resins of the primeval woods. Why does the bird keep, even in old age, the same brilliancy of plumage and the same clearness of eye? Is it because it gets the elixir vitæ from the hidden reservoir of nature? Be this as it may, there are times when I sincerely long for a ball of liquidambar or a mouthful of pungent spring buds. The inner bark of the tulip-tree has the wildest of all wild tastes, a peculiarly grateful flavor when taken infinitesimally, something more savage than sassafras or spice-wood, and full of all manner of bitter hints and astringent threatenings: it has long been used as the very best appetizer for horses in the early spring, and it is equally good for man. The yellow-bellied woodpecker knows its value, taking it with head jauntily awry and quiet wing-tremblings of delight. The squirrels get the essence of it as they munch the pale leaf-buds, or later when they bite the cones out of the flowers. The humming-birds and wild bees are the favored ones, however, for they get the ultimate distillation of all the racy and fragrant elements from root to bloom.

The Indians knew the value of the tulip-tree as well as its beauty. Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send the sensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of course leaves you standing on the water without the faith to keep you from going under; and usually it is your head that you are standing on. But, to return to our tree, I would like to see its merits as an ornamental and shade tree duly recognized. If grown in the free air and sunlight, it forms a heavy and beautifully-shaped top, on a smooth, bright bole, and I think it might be forced to bloom about the fifteenth year. The flowers of young, thrifty trees that have been left standing in open fields are much larger, brighter, and more graceful than those of old gnarled forest-trees, but the finest blooms I ever saw were on a giant tulip in a thin wood of Indiana. A storm blew the tree down in the midst of its flowering, and I chanced to see it an hour later. The whole great top was yellow with the gaudy cups, each gleaming "like a flake of fire," as Dr. Holmes says of the oriole. Some of them were nearly four inches across. Last year a small tree, growing in a garden near where I write, bloomed for the first time. It was about twenty years old. Its flowers were paler and shallower than those gathered at the same time in the woods. It may be that transplanting, or any sort of forcing or cultivation, may cause the blooms to deteriorate in both shape and color, but I am sure that plenty of light and air is necessary to their best development.

In one way the tulip-tree is closely connected with the most picturesque and interesting period of American development. I mean the period of "hewed-log" houses. Here and there among the hills of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, there remains one of those low, heavy, lime-chinked structures, the best index of the first change from frontier-life, with all its dangers and hardships, to the peace and contentment of a broader liberty and an assured future. In fact, to my mind, a house of hewed tulip-logs, with liberal stone chimneys and heavy oaken doors, embowered in an old gnarled apple-and cherry-orchard, always suggests a sort of simple honesty and hospitality long since fallen into desuetude, but once the most marked characteristic of the American people. It is hard to imagine any meanness or illiberality being generated in such a house. Patriotism, domestic fidelity, and spotless honesty used to sit before those broad fireplaces wherein the hickory logs melted to snowy ashes. The men who hewed those logs "hewed to the line" in more ways than one. Their words, like the bullets from their flint-locked rifles, went straight to the point. The women, too, they of the "big wheel" and the "little wheel," who carded and spun and wove, though they may have been a trifle harsh and angular, were diamond-pure and the mothers of vigorous offspring.

I often wonder if there may not be a perfectly explainable connection between the decay or disappearance of the forests and the evaporation, so to speak, of man's rugged sincerity and earnestness. Why should not the simple ingredients that make up the worldly part of our souls and bodies be found in all their purity where nature's reservoir has never been disturbed or its contents tainted? Why may not the subtile force that develops the immense tulip-tree and clothes it with such a starry mantle have power also to invigorate and intensify the life of man? "I was rocked in a poplar trough," was the politician's boast a generation ago. Such a declaration might mean a great deal if the sturdy, towering strength of the tree out of which the trough was dug could have been absorbed by the embryo Congressman. The "oldest inhabitant" of every Western neighborhood recollects the "sugar-trough" used in the maple-sap-gathering season, ere the genuine "sugar-camp" had been abandoned. Young tulip-trees about fifteen inches in diameter were cut down and their boles sawed into lengths of three feet. These were split in two, and made into troughs by hollowing the faces and charring them over a fire. During the bright spring days of sugar-making the young Western mother would wrap her sturdy babe in its blanket and put it in a dry sugar-trough to sleep while she tended the boiling syrup. A man born sixty years ago in the region of tulip-trees and sugar-camps was probably cradled in a "poplar" trough; and there were those born who would now be sixty years old if they had not in unwary infancy tumbled into the enormous rainwater-troughs with which every well-regulated house was furnished. I have seen one or two of these having a capacity of fifty barrels dug from a single tulip bole. In such a pitfall some budding Washington or Lincoln may have been whelmed without causing so much as a ripple on the surface of history.

But, turning to take leave of my stately and blooming Western beauty, I see that she is both a blonde and a brunette. She has all the dreamy, languid grace of the South combined with the verve and force of the North. She is dark and she is fair, with blushing cheeks and dewy lips, sound-hearted, strong, lofty, self-reliant, a true queen of the woods, more stately than Diana, and more vigorous than Maid Marian.

    MAURICE THOMPSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP

Daniel Webster's "Moods."

A late magazine-article treating of one of America's illustrious dead—Daniel Webster—alluded to his well-known sombre moods, and the gentle suasion by which his accomplished wife was enabled to shorten their duration or dispel them entirely.

On an occasion well remembered, though the "chiel takin' notes" was but a simple child, I myself was present when the grim, moody reticence of the great orator converted fully twoscore ardent admirers into personal foes.

During the summer of 1837, Mr. Webster, in pursuit of a Presidential nomination, executed his famous tour through the Great West, at that time embracing only the States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The first infant railway of the continent being yet in swaddling-clothes, the journey was accomplished by private conveyance, and the bumps and bruises stoically endured in probing bottomless pits of prairie-mud, diversified by joltings over rude log-ways and intrusive stumps, were but a part of the cruel price paid for a glittering prize which in the end vanished before the aspirant like fairy gold. At stations within reach of their personal influence, local politicians flew to the side of the brilliant statesman with the beautiful fidelity of steel to magnet: hence he was environed by a self-appointed escort of obsequious men, constantly changing as he progressed.

"Our member" spared neither whip nor spur, and joined the triumphal march at Chicago. Mr. Webster was then on the home-stretch, and it was shortly after this date that the incident I describe occurred. It was a time of wild Western speculation; towns and cities sprung into being as buoyantly as soap-bubbles, and often proved as perishing. Major Morse was president of a company which, perceiving a promising site for harbor and town on the shore of Michigan, where yet the Indian charmed the deer, secured a tract of land and proceeded to lay out an inviting town of—corner-lots. The major's family occupied temporarily a wide log house, with a rough "lean-to" of bright pine boards freshly cut at the mill below. Outside, the dwelling was merely a hut of primitive pattern nestling under the shade of a tall tree; inside, it presented a large room divided by curtains into cooking-and sleeping-apartments, surmounted by a stifling loft reached by the rungs of a permanent perpendicular ladder. Savory odors of wild fowl and venison daily drifted up the charred throat of its clay-daubed chimney, and by the same route, whenever the rolling smoke permitted, children sitting about the hearth took observations of the clouds and heavenly bodies, according to the time of day. A narrow passage cut through the heart of the old logs led into the fragrant "lean-to," where against the wall rested a massive sideboard of dark mahogany, its top alight with glitter of glass and silver, its inmost recesses redolent of the creature comforts which the hospitality of the times demanded. Vases and meaner crockery overflowed everywhere with the gorgeousness of blossoms daily plucked from sandy slopes or the verge of the adjacent marsh. Bright carpeting kindly hid the splintered floor, and pictures did like service for the rough walls, while the whitest of muslin festooned the tiny windows.

On the morning of the Occasion, cheerful sunshine filtered through the quivering leaves of the big tree near the house, glorifying a late breakfast-table, around which the family were gathering, when horses driven in hot haste were reined up at the door. Stepping quickly forth, the major found his hand clasped by "our member," who begged the hospitalities of the house for the great Daniel Webster and suite, just at hand. Despite political differences, the desired welcome was heartily accorded, and with crucified appetites the family retired to give place to the unbidden guests, who filed into the room bandying compliments with their gay host. A kingly head, grandly set above powerful shoulders, easily marked the man in whom the interest of the hour centred. Strangely quiet amid the noisy group, he moved alone, nor waked responsive even to his host, until a brighter sally than usual provoked a grim kind of laughter. Then he suddenly aroused himself to new life, joining with a burst of humor in the pleasantries of the feast. The unexpected brightness of the cosy room was not lost on Mr. Webster, who, on entering, paused at the threshold and glanced around in an appreciative manner, while a deep, restful sigh escaped his weary soul. The dreary drive through the wilderness lent an added charm to the little oasis of civilized comfort thus encountered in the lonely backwoods of a Western quarter-section.

News of the distinguished arrival speedily flew among the laborers running the mill and constructing dwellings for the in-rushing population. Tom and Bill of the hammer, and Mike and Patsey of the spade, alike forsook their tools in order to witness the exit of a hero from the major's door. They even hoped to receive some expression of wisdom in golden words from lips used to the flow of stirring thought and burning eloquence. Lounging patiently under the trees, the expectant men listened to the clink and clatter of serving and the bursts of merriment within. At the conclusion of the breakfast and the subsequent chat, Mr. Webster asked for his hostess, to whom with great courtesy he expressed his sense of "the kindness extended to the stranger in a strange land," and, adieus being over, he approached the open door-way, and looked strangely annoyed at the sight of a double line of white-sleeved stalwart men who stood with bared heads awaiting his appearance. Then a great mood fell upon the man, with never a gentle soul at hand to charm it away. Not a feature stirred in recognition of the, voluntary homage rendered by the throng of humble men,—men controlling the ballots so ardently desired and sought. With hat pressed firmly over an ominously lowering brow, looking straight before him with cavernous, tired eyes which seemed to observe nothing whereon they rested, Webster walked through the hushed lines in grave stateliness. The crowd was only waiting for a spark of encouragement to shout itself hoarse in enthusiastic huzzahs. Eyes shone with suppressed excitement, and strong hearts swelled with pride in the towering man whose fame had surged like a tidal wave over the land. Yet with insolent deliberation he mounted the step and seated himself in the waiting carriage, giving no sign of having even noticed the flattering demonstration made in his honor. The smiles, nods, and hand-clasps expected of the chief were lavishly dispensed by his mortified satellites, all of which availed not to smother the curses, loud and deep, splitting the summer air, as the wheels disappeared in the forest.

"Begorra, thin," bawled Patsey, "it's mesilf ut'll niver vote fur this big Yankee 'ristocrat, innehow. Ef he wuz a foine Irish jintleman, now, er even a r'yal prince av the blud, there'd be no sinse in his airs, bedad!"

Tom and Bill were less noisy in their just wrath, but it ran equally deep: "He belongs to the party. But when Daniel comes up for office—look out! We'll score a hard day's work against him, party or no party!"

The major rose to the occasion. Being a bit of a politician and an old-school Democrat, he could not resist the opportunity presented. With a humorous air he sprang to the nearest stump and improvised an electric little speech which sent the men back to labor, madder if not wiser voters.

With other living witnesses of the events narrated, often wondering over the strangeness of the scene of long ago, I am truly glad at the eleventh hour to find the solution of the problem in moods, rather than in a snobbish pride unbefitting the greatness of the man.

    F.C.M.

Feuds and Lynch-Law in the Southwest

A great deal has been said and written lately about feuds and lynch-law in the districts around the lower Mississippi. The reports of recent lynching there have probably been very much exaggerated; and it would certainly be unfair to form a positive opinion about the matter without a thorough knowledge of all the circumstances.

No one who visited that part of the country before the war could return to it now without noticing the higher degree of order and the numerous evidences of progress. But lynching law-breakers and resorting to the knife or pistol to settle private disputes were once ordinary occurrences there, and they were usually marked by a businesslike coolness which gave them a distinctive character.

In the winter of 1853-54 I was clerk of a steamer owned in Wheeling. The steamer was obliged to wait some time at Napoleon for a rise in the Arkansas River to enable it to pass over the bar at the confluence of that river with the Mississippi. Napoleon then had between three and four hundred inhabitants, and was considered the worst place on the Mississippi except Natchez-under-the-Hill. Some of the dwellings were of considerable size, and, judging from their exterior, were kept in good order. They were the residences of the few who belonged to the better class, and who, to a certain extent, exercised control over their less reputable townsmen.

We were treated very kindly by the citizens, and they declined any return for their hospitality. We soon noticed that we were never invited to visit any of them at their dwellings. At their places of business we were cordially welcomed, and they seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in giving us information and affording us any amusement in their power.

Having some canned oysters among our stores, we twice invited a number of our friends to an oyster-supper. Although our invitations included their families, none but male guests attended. This, together with the fact that we rarely saw any ladies on the street, seemed very strange to us; but we made no comments, for we discovered very soon after our arrival that it would not be prudent to ask questions about matters that did not concern us. At church one Sunday night we noticed that all the ladies present—composing nearly the whole of the congregation—were dressed in black, and many of them were in deep mourning. This gave us some idea as to the reason for their exclusiveness. Soon afterward a murder occurred almost within my own sight. Two friends were standing on the street and talking pleasantly to each other, when they were approached by a man whom they did not know. Suddenly a second man came close to the stranger, and, without saying a word, drew a pistol and shot him dead. The murderer was instantly seized, bound, and placed in the jail.

The jail was a square pen about thirty feet high, built of hewn logs, without any opening except in the roof. This opening was only large enough to admit one person at a time, and was protected by a heavy door. The prisoner was forced by his captors to mount the roof by means of a ladder, and then was lowered with a rope to the ground inside. The rope was withdrawn, the door securely fastened, and he was caged, without any possible means of escape, to await the verdict and sentence of the jury summoned by "Judge Lynch."

The trial was very short. The facts were proven, and the verdict was that the murderer should be severely whipped and made to leave the town forthwith. The whipping was administered, and he left immediately afterward.

Of course there was a good deal of excitement over this matter, and all the male inhabitants collected to talk about it. The discussion extended to some similar cases of recent occurrence and soon gave rise to angry disputes. In a very short time pistols and knives were produced, invitations to fight were given, and it seemed that blood would soon be shed. By the interference, however, of some of the older and more influential citizens, quiet was restored, and no one was injured. We were afterward told that there was hardly a man in the crowd who had not lost a father, brother, or near male relative by knife or pistol, either in a supposed fair fight or by foul means.

At that time the hatred of negroes from "free States" was intense, while those from "slave States" were treated kindly and regarded merely as persons of an inferior race.

Some time before our arrival, a steamer belonging to Pittsburg had stopped at Napoleon, and the colored steward went on shore to buy provisions. While bargaining for them he became involved in a quarrel with a white man and struck him. He was instantly seized, and would no doubt have paid for his temerity with his life if some one in the crowd had not exclaimed, "A live nigger's worth twenty dead ones! Let's sell him!" This suggestion was adopted. In a very short time the unfortunate steward was bound, mounted on a swift horse, and hurried away toward the interior of the State. He was guarded by a party of mounted men, and in less than a week's time he was working on a plantation as a slave for life, with no prospect of communicating with his relatives or friends.

One morning the captain of the steamer and I saw a crowd collect, and on approaching it we found a debate going on as to what should be done with a large and well-dressed colored man, evidently under the influence of liquor, who was seated on the ground with his arms and legs bound. He had knocked one white man down and struck several others while they were attempting to secure him. The crowd was undecided whether to give him a good whipping for his offence or to send for his master (who lived on the other side of the river, in Mississippi) and let him inflict the punishment. Finally, the master was sent for. He soon appeared, and stated that he had given his "boy" permission to come over to Napoleon, and had also given him money to buy some things he wanted. He was "a good boy," and had never been in trouble before, and if the citizens of Napoleon would forgive him this time he, the master, would guarantee that the boy should never visit Napoleon again. The master also stated he would "stand drinks" for the whole crowd. This gave general satisfaction. The drinks were taken, and the master and his slave were enthusiastically escorted to their dug-out on the shore. Much hand-shaking took place, in which the "boy" participated, and many invitations were given to both to visit Napoleon again; after which they rowed contentedly to their home.

    J.A.M.

The Etymology of "Babe."

In the latest English etymological dictionary, that by the Rev. W.W. Skeat, we read under the word babe, "Instead of babe being formed from the infantine sound ba, it has been modified from maqui, probably by infantine influences. Baby is a diminutive form."

Maqui is Early Welsh for son, and those to whom Mr. Skeat's modified maqui seems absurd will be pleased to find its absurdity indicated, if not proved, by a Greek author of the sixth century.