The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861

Even the notes of insects are a deafening crash, like the rattling of machinery in a cotton-mill. Except in the hush of noonday, the notes of singing-birds are drowned amidst the howling of monkeys, the whining of sapajous, the roar of the jaguar, and the dismal hooting of thousands of wild animals that riot in these awful solitudes. The sight of the fairest flowers and the most beautiful insects and birds only renders one more keenly sensitive to the frightful discords that startle and the perils that surround him.

Similar contrasts are observed in the vegetation of this region, where the giant trees of the forest are chained in the embraces of vines that contend with them for existence and finally strangle them. Trees and other plants are crowded together so promiscuously, that Nature seems to be striving to collect into one space every possible variety of species. Trees of the most poisonous and deadly qualities grow side by side with the Bread-Fruit, the Cocoa-Nut, and the beneficent Cinchona. Here are the poison and its antidote,—the monster tree and its miniature epiphyte,—the plant that astonishes by its magnitude, and the one that delights us by its minuteness. Here, if anywhere on the face of the earth, may we form some conception of the state of our planet during the Eocene period, before the world had come under the dominion of the human race.

But if Nature in this region has manifested an exuberance of animal and vegetable life, thereby rendering her bounties almost unavailable to man, there are other parts in which she seems to have provided for his particular benefit. In these favored regions, we find the Banana, the Cocoa, and the Date Palm, and other special gifts of Providence to the inhabitants of the equator. Palms are generally found only in small groups and plantations, but there are certain species of this family which are associated in extensive woods, and constitute, in some respects, one of the most charming descriptions of forest-scenery. The Dwarf Palms of the sub-tropical regions are chiefly assembled in masses, of which the Palmetto of Florida and the Chaemerops of the South of Europe are conspicuous examples. The true Palms are likewise sometimes associated in forests, though not generally of a social habit. In one of the most celebrated of these, at the mouth of the Orinoco, composed chiefly of the Mauritian Palms, the wild Guaranos have established a national existence. Like monkeys, they live almost wholly in trees, having their habitations supported either by wooden pillars or by a matting suspended from tree to tree. In the wet season, when the ground is inundated, the inhabitants travel about their village in canoes.

The beauty of a grove of Palms has been a favorite theme of travellers. Humboldt, who saw Nature with the eye of a painter and the feelings of a poet, amidst all the dry details of science, regards them as the most beautiful of vegetable productions. It has always seemed to me, however, that travellers in general have been led to exaggerate the charms of Nature in the tropics, by observing the remarkable beauty of a few individual objects. Their susceptibility to be affected by the scenes presented to their view is likewise exalted by the confinement of their voyage; they are enraptured with the novelty of everything about them, by the voluptuousness of the climate and the abundance of delicious fruits, and always afterwards recur to the scenes of their tropical visit with an excited imagination.

In countries near the equator, many plants which are herbs in our latitude assume arborescent forms. Such are the Tree-Grasses, which form impenetrable forests, equalling some of the Fir woods of the North in extent, if not in beauty and grandeur. In this part of the world we know the Ferns only as a low herbaceous tribe of plants, consisting of mere fronds rising out of the ground. We admire them for their beautifully compounded leaves, and their colors of red, orange, and russet that variegate our meadows in June, their garlands of verdure upon the rocky hills in winter, and the profusion of their frondage in the shady glens in summer. But in certain parts of the equatorial zone the Ferns put off the humble guise in which they appear at the North. They no longer associate with the lowly Violet, allowing themselves to be crowded by the Hellebore and overtopped by the Meadow Rue; but they rear their branches aloft and assume the dignity and stature of trees. Man, who looks down upon them in our own latitude, and tramples them under his feet, looks in that region far above his head, and beholds their magnificent fronds spread out like a great tent between him and the heavens.

Tree-Ferns, though confined principally to the equatorial zone, are unable to endure the heat of the plains. They occupy an elevation that affords them the continual temperature of spring, three thousand feet above the sea,—the region of the lowest stratum of clouds,—where they receive the benefit of their moisture before it descends to the earth in showers. Humboldt ranks them with the noblest forms of tropical vegetation,—less lofty than the Palms, but surpassing them in beauty of foliage. The arborescent Ferns and Grasses are true specimens of those plants, of simple organic structure, which are found in the fossil remains of the early geological periods, and are the only plants now extant which may be considered the representatives of that epoch, when the saurians and the mastodons held dominion over the earth, and before the Angel of Light had descended from heaven to make preparation for a higher race of beings.

* * * * *

MISS LUCINDA

But that Solomon is out of fashion I should quote him, here and now, to the effect that there is a time for all things; but Solomon is obsolete, and never, no, never, will I dare to quote a dead language, "for raisons I have," as the exiles of Erin say. Yet, in spite of Solomon and Horace, I may express my own less concise opinion, that even in hard times, and dull times, and war times, there is yet a little time to laugh, a brief hour to smile and love and pity, just as through this dreary easterly storm, bringing clouds and rain, sobbing against casement and door with the inarticulate wail of tempests, there comes now and then the soft shine of a sun behind it all, a fleeting glitter, an evanescent aspect of what has been.

But if I apologize for a story that is nowise tragic, nor fitted to "the fashion of these times," possibly somebody will say at its end that I should also have apologized for its subject, since it is as easy for an author to treat his readers to high themes as vulgar ones, and velvet can be thrown into a portrait as cheaply as calico; but of this apology I wash my hands. I believe nothing in place or circumstance makes romance. I have the same quick sympathy for Biddy's sorrows with Patrick that I have for the Empress of France and her august, but rather grim lord and master. I think words are often no harder to bear than "a blue bating," and I have a reverence for poor old maids as great as for the nine Muses. Commonplace people are only commonplace from character, and no position affects that. So forgive me once more, patient reader, if I offer to you no tragedy in high life, no sentimental history of fashion and wealth, but only a little story about a woman who could not be a heroine.

Miss Lucinda Jane Ann Manners was a lady of unknown age, who lived in a place I call Dalton, in a State of these Disuniting States, which I do not mention for good cause. I have already had so many unconscious personalities visited on my devoted head that but for lucidity I should never mention persons or places, inconvenient as it would be. However, Miss Lucinda did live, and lived by the aid of "means," which, in the vernacular, is money. Not a great deal, it is true,—five thousand dollars at lawful interest, and a little wooden house, do not imply many luxuries even to a single-woman; and it is also true that a little fine sewing taken in helped Miss Manners to provide herself with a few small indulgences otherwise beyond her reach. She had one or two idiosyncrasies, as they are politely called, that were her delight. Plenty of dish-towels were necessary to her peace of mind; without five pair of scissors she could not be happy; and Tricopherous was essential to her well-being: indeed, she often said she would rather give up coffee than Tricopherous, for her hair was black and wiry and curly, and caps she abhorred, so that of a winter's day her head presented the most irrelevant and volatile aspect, each particular hair taking a twist on its own responsibility, and improvising a wild halo about her unsaintly face, unless subdued into propriety by the aforesaid fluid.

I said Miss Lucinda's face was unsaintly,—I mean unlike ancient saints as depicted by contemporary artists: modern and private saints are after another fashion. I met one yesterday, whose green eyes, great nose, thick lips, and sallow wrinkles, under a bonnet of fifteen years' standing, further clothed upon by a scant merino cloak and cat-skin tippet, would have cut a sorry figure in the gallery of the Vatican or the Louvre, and put the tranquil Madonna of San Sisto into a state of stunning antithesis; but if Saint Agnes or Saint Catharine was half as good as my saint, I am glad of it!

No, there was nothing sublime and dolorous about Miss Manners; her face was round, cheery, and slightly puckered, with two little black eyes sparking and shining under dark brows, a nose she unblushingly called pug, and a big mouth with eminently white and regular teeth, which she said were such a comfort, for they never ached, and never would to the end of time. Add to this physiognomy a small and rather spare figure, dressed in the cleanest of calicoes, always made in one style, and rigidly scorning hoops,—without a symptom of a collar, in whose place (or it may be over which) she wore a white cambric handkerchief, knotted about her throat, and the two ends brought into subjection by means of a little angular-headed gold pin, her sole ornament, and a relic of her old father's days of widowhood, when buttons were precarious tenures. So much for her aspect. Her character was even more quaint.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, one of the old school, the last whose breeches and knee-buckles adorned the profession, who never "outlived his usefulness," nor lost his godly simplicity. Parson Manners held rule over an obscure and quiet village in the wilds of Vermont, where hard-handed farmers wrestled with rocks and forests for their daily bread, and looked forward to heaven as a land of green pastures and still waters, where agriculture should be a pastime, and winter impossible. Heavy freshets from the mountains that swelled their rushing brooks into annual torrents, and snow-drifts that covered five-rail fences a foot above the posts and blocked up the turnpike-road for weeks, caused this congregation fully to appreciate Parson Manners's favorite hymns,—

"There is a land of pure delight,"

and

"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand."

Indeed, one irreverent, but "pretty smart feller," who lived on the top of a hill known as Drift Hill, where certain adventurous farmers dwelt for the sake of its smooth sheep-pastures, was heard to say, after a mighty sermon by Parson Manners about the seven-times heated furnaces of judgment reserved for the wicked, that "Parson hadn't better try to skeer Drift-Hillers with a hot place; 't wouldn't more 'n jest warm 'em through down there, arter a real snappin' winter."

In this out-of-the-way nook was Lucinda Jane Ann born and bred. Her mother was like her in many things,—just such a cheery, round-faced little body, but with no more mind than found ample scope for itself in superintending the affairs of house and farm, and vigorously "seeing to" her husband and child. So, while Mrs. Manners baked, and washed, and ironed, and sewed, and knit, and set the sweetest example of quiet goodness and industry to all her flock, without knowing she could set an example, or be followed as one, the Parson amused himself, between sermons of powerful doctrine and parochial duties of a more human interest, with educating Lucinda, whose intellect was more like his own than her mother's. A strange training it was for a young girl,—mathematics, metaphysics, Latin, theology of the driest sort; and after an utter failure at Greek and Hebrew, though she had toiled patiently through seven books of the "Aeneid," Parson Manners mildly sniffed at the inferiority of the female mind, and betook himself to teaching her French, which she learned rapidly, and spoke with a pure American accent, perhaps as pleasing to a Parisian ear as the hiss of Piedmont or the gutturals of Switzerland. Moreover, the minister had been brought up, himself, in the most scrupulous refinement of manner; his mother was a widow, the last of an "old family," and her dainty, delicate observances were inbred, as it were, in her only son. This sort of elegance is perhaps the most delicate test of training and descent, and all these things Lucinda was taught from the grateful recollection of a son who never forgot his mother, through all the solitary labors and studies of a long life. So it came to pass, that, after her mother died, Lucinda grew more and more like her father, and, as she became a woman, these rare refinements separated her more and more from those about her, and made her necessarily solitary. As for marriage, the possibility of such a thing never crossed her mind; there was not a man in the parish who did not offend her sense of propriety and shock her taste, whenever she met one; and though her warm, kind heart made her a blessing to the poor and sick, her mother was yet bitterly regretted at quiltings and tea-drinkings, where she had been so "sociable-like."

It is rather unfortunate for such a position as Lucinda's, that, as Deacon Stowell one day remarked to her father, "Natur' will be Natur' as much on Drift Hill as down to Bosting"; and when she began to feel that "strong necessity of loving" that sooner or later assails every woman's heart, there was nothing for it to overflow on, when her father had taken his share. Now Lucinda loved the Parson most devoutly. Ever since the time when she could just remember watching through the dusk his white stockings, as they glimmered across the road to evening-meeting, and looked like a supernatural pair of legs taking a walk on their own responsibility, twilight concealing the black breeches and coat from mortal view, Lucinda had regarded her father with a certain pleasing awe. His long abstractions, his profound knowledge, his grave, benign manners, and the thousand daily refinements of speech and act that seemed to put him far above the sphere of his pastorate,—all these things inspired as much reverence as affection; and when she wished with all her heart and soul she had a sister or a brother to tend and kiss and pet, it never once occurred to her that any of those tender familiarities could be expended on her father: she would as soon have thought of caressing any of the goodly angels whose stout legs, flowing curls, and impossible draperies sprawled among the pictures in the big Bible, and who excited her wonder as much by their garments as their turkey-wings and brandishing arms. So she betook herself to pets, and growing up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father fell asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of her own,—hens, chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and sundry transient guests of stranger kind; so that, when she left her old home, and removed to the little house in Dalton that had been left her by her mother's aunt, and had found her small property safely invested by means of an old friend of her father's, Miss Manners made one more journey to Vermont to bring in safety to their future dwelling a cat and three kittens, an old blind crow, a yellow dog of the true cur breed, and a rooster with three hens, "real creepers," as she often said, "none of your long-legged, screaming creatures."

Lucinda missed her father, and mourned him as constantly and faithfully as ever a daughter could; but her temperament was more cheerful and buoyant than his, and when once she was quietly settled in her little house, her garden and her pets gave her such full occupation that she sometimes blamed herself for not feeling more lonely and unhappy. A little longer life or a little more experience would have taught her better: power to be happy is the last thing to regret. Besides, it would have been hard to be cheerless in that sunny little house, with its queer old furniture of three-legged tables, high-backed chairs, and chintz curtains where red mandarins winked at blue pagodas on a deep-yellow ground, and birds of insane ornithology pecked at insects that never could have been hatched, or perched themselves on blossoms totally unknown to any mortal flora. Old engravings of Bartolozzi, from the stiff elegances of Angelica Kaufman and the mythologies of Reynolds, adorned the shelf; and the carpet in the parlor was of veritable English make, older than Lucinda herself, but as bright in its fading and as firm in its usefulness as she. Up-stairs the tiny chambers were decked with spotless white dimity, and rush-bottomed chairs stood in each window, with a strip of the same old carpet by either bedside; and in the kitchen the blue settle that had stood by the Vermont fireside now defended this lesser hearth from the draught of the door, and held under the seat thereof sundry ironing-sheets, the blanket belonging to them, and good store of ticking and worsted holders. A half-gone set of egg-shell china stood in the parlor-closet,—cups, and teapot, and sugar-bowl, rimmed with brown and gold in a square pattern, and a shield without blazon on the side; the quaint tea-caddy with its stopper stood over against the pursy little cream-pot, and held up in its lumps of sparkling sugar the oddest sugar-tongs, also a family relic;—beside this, six small spoons, three large ones, and a little silver porringer comprised all the "plate" belonging to Miss Manners, so that no fear of burglars haunted her, and but for her pets she would have lived a life of profound and monotonous tranquillity. But this was a vast exception; in her life her pets were the great item now;—her cat had its own chair in the parlor and kitchen; her dog, a rug and a basket never to be meddled with by man or beast; her old crow, its special nest of flannel and cotton, where it feebly croaked as soon as Miss Lucinda began to spread the little table for her meals; and the three kittens had their own playthings and their own saucer as punctiliously as if they had been children. In fact, Miss Manners had a greater share of kindness for beasts than for mankind. A strange compound of learning and unworldliness, of queer simplicity, native penetration, and common sense, she had read enough books to despise human nature as it develops itself in history and theology, and she had not known enough people to love it in its personal development. She had a general idea that all men were liars, and that she must be on her guard against their propensity to cheat and annoy a lonely and helpless woman; for, to tell the truth, in her good father's over-anxiety to defend her from the snares of evil men after his death, his teachings had given her opinion this bias, and he had forgotten to tell her how kindly and how true he had found many of his own parishioners, how few inclined to harm or pain him. So Miss Lucinda made her entrance into life at Dalton, distrustful, but not suspicious; and after a few attempts on the part of the women who were her neighbors to be friendly or intimate, they gave her up as impracticable: not because she was impolite or unkind: they did not themselves know why they failed, though she could have told them; for, old maid as she was, poor and plain and queer, she could not bring herself to associate familiarly with people who put their teaspoons into the sugar-bowl, helped themselves with their own knives and forks, gathered up bits of uneaten butter and returned them to the plate for next time, or replaced on the dish pieces of cake half eaten or cut with the knives they had just introduced into their mouths. Miss Lucinda's code of minor morals would have forbidden her to drink from the same cup with a queen, and have considered a pitchfork as suitable as a knife to eat with, nor would she have offered to a servant the least thing she had touched with her own lips or her own implements of eating; and she was too delicately bred to look on in comfort where such things were practised. Of course these women were not ladies; and though many of them had kind hearts and warm impulses of goodness, yet that did not make up to her for their social misdemeanors, and she drew herself more into her own little shell, and cared more for her garden and her chickens, her cats and her dog, than for all the humanity of Dalton put together.

Miss Manners held her flowers next dearest to her pets, and treated them accordingly. Her garden was the most brilliant bit of ground possible. It was big enough to hold one flourishing peach-tree, one Siberian crab, and a solitary egg-plum; while under these fruitful boughs bloomed moss-roses in profusion, of the dear old-fashioned kind, every deep pink bud with its clinging garment of green breathing out the richest odor; close by, the real white rose, which fashion has banished to country towns, unfolded its cups of pearl flushed with yellow sunrise to the heart; and by its side its damask sister waved long sprays of bloom and perfume. Tulips, dark-purple and cream-color, burning scarlet and deep-maroon, held their gay chalices up to catch the dew; hyacinths, blue, white, and pink, hung heavy bells beneath them; spiced carnations of rose and garnet crowded their bed in July and August, heart's-ease fringed the walks, May honeysuckles clambered over the board-fence, and monthly honeysuckles overgrew the porch at the back-door, making perpetual fragrance from their moth-like horns of crimson and ivory. Nothing inhabited those beds that was not sweet and fair and old-fashioned. Gray-lavender-bushes sent up purple spikes in the middle of the garden and were duly housed in winter, but these were the sole tender plants admitted, and they pleaded their own cause in the breath of the linen-press and the bureau-drawers that held Miss Lucinda's clothes. Beyond the flowers, utility blossomed in a row of bean-poles, a hedge of currant-bushes against the farther fence, carefully tended cauliflowers, and onions enough to tell of their use as sparing as their number; a few deep-red beets and golden carrots were all the vegetables beside: Miss Lucinda never ate potatoes or pork.

Her housekeeping, but for her pets, would have been the proper housewifery for a fairy. Out of her fruit she annually conserved miracles of flavor and transparence,—great plums like those in Aladdin's garden, of shining topaz,—peaches tinged with the odorous bitter of their pits, and clear as amber,—crimson crabs floating in their own ruby sirup, or transmuted into jelly crystal clear, yet breaking with a grain,—and jelly from the acid currants to garnish her dinner-table or refresh the fevered lips of a sick neighbor. It was a study to visit her tiny pantry, where all these "lucent sirops" stood in tempting array,—where spices, and sugar, and tea, in their small jars, flanked the sweetmeats, and a jar of glass showed its store of whitest honey, and another stood filled with crisp cakes. Here always a loaf or two of home-made bread lay rolled in a snowy cloth, and another was spread over a dish of butter; pies were not in favor here,—nor milk, save for the cats; salt fish Miss Manners never could abide,—her savory taste allowed only a bit of rich old cheese, or thin scraps of hung beef, with her bread and butter; sauces and spices were few in her repertory, but she cooked as only a lady can cook, and might have asked Soyer himself to dinner. For, verily, after much meditation and experience, I have divined that it takes as much sense and refinement and talent to cook a dinner, wash and wipe a dish, make a bed as it should be made, and dust a room as it should be dusted, as goes to the writing of a novel or shining in high society.

But because Miss Lucinda Manners was reserved and "unsociable," as the neighbors pronounced her, I did not, therefore, mean to imply that she was inhuman. No neighbor of hers, local or Scriptural, fell ill, without an immediate offer of aid from her: she made the best gruel known to Dalton invalids, sent the ripest fruit and the sweetest flowers; and if she could not watch with the sick, because it interfered with her duties at home in an unpleasant and inconvenient way, she would sit with them hour after hour in the day-time, and wait on all their caprices with the patient tenderness of a mother. Children she always eyed with strange wistfulness, as if she longed to kiss them, but didn't know how; yet no child was ever invited across her threshold, for the yellow cur hated to be played with, and children always torment kittens.

So Miss Lucinda wore on happily toward the farther side of the middle Ages. One after another of her pets passed away and was replaced, the yellow cur barked his last currish signal, the cat died and her kittens came to various ends of time or casualty, the crow fell away to dust and was too old to stuff, and the garden bloomed and faded ten times over, before Miss Manners found herself to be forty-six years old, which she heroically acknowledged one fine day to the census-taker. But it was not this consciousness, nor its confession, that drew the dark brows so low over Miss Lucinda's eyes that day; it was quite another trouble, and one that wore heavily on her mind, as we shall proceed to explain. For Miss Manners, being, like all the rest of her sex, quite unable to do without some masculine help, had employed, for some seven years, an old man by the name of Israel Slater, to do her "chores," as the vernacular hath it. It is a mortifying thing, and one that strikes at the roots of Women's Rights terribly sharp blows, but I must even own it, that one might as well try to live without one's bread-and-butter as without the aid of the dominant sex. When I see women split wood, unload coal-carts, move wash-tubs, and roll barrels of flour and apples handily down cellar-ways or up into carts, then I shall believe in the sublime theories of the strong-minded sisters; but as long as I see before me my own forlorn little hands, and sit down on the top stair to recover breath, and try in vain to lift the water-pitcher at table, just so long I shall be glad and thankful that there are men in the world, and that half a dozen of them are my kindest and best friends. It was rather an affliction to Miss Lucinda to feel this innate dependence, and at first she resolved to employ only small boys, and never any one of them more than a week or two. She had an unshaped theory that an old maid was a match for a small boy, but that a man would cheat and domineer over her. Experience sadly put to flight these notions for a succession of boys in this cabinet-ministry for the first three years of her stay in Dalton would have driven her into a Presbyterian convent, had there been one at hand. Boy Number One caught the yellow cur out of bounds one day, and shaved his plumy tail to a bare stick, and Miss Lucinda fairly shed tears of grief and rage when Pink appeared at the door with the denuded appendage tucked between his little legs, and his funny yellow eyes casting sidelong looks of apprehension at his mistress. Boy Number One was despatched directly. Number Two did pretty well for a month, but his integrity and his appetite conflicted, and Miss Lucinda found him one moonlight night perched in her plum-tree devouring the half-ripe fruit. She shook him down with as little ceremony as if he had been an apple; and though he lay at Death's door for a week with resulting cholera-morbus, she relented not. So the experiment went on, till a list of casualties that numbered in it fatal accidents to three kittens, two hens and a rooster, and at last Pink himself, who was pent into a decline by repeated drenchings from the watering-pot, put an end to her forbearance, and she instituted in her viziership the old man who had now kept his office so long,—a queer, withered, slow, humorous old creature, who did "chores" for some six or seven other households, and got a living by sundry "jobs" of wood-sawing, hoeing corn, and other like works of labor, if not of skill. Israel was a great comfort to Miss Lucinda: he was efficient counsel in the maladies of all her pets, had a sovereign cure for the gapes in chickens, and could stop a cat's fit with the greatest ease; he kept the tiny garden in perfect order, and was very honest, and Miss Manners favored him accordingly. She compounded liniment for his rheumatism, herb-sirup for his colds, presented him with a set of flannel shirts, and knit him a comforter; so that Israel expressed himself strongly in favor of "Miss Lucindy," and she said to herself he really was "quite good for a man."

But just now, in her forty-seventh year, Miss Lucinda had come to grief, and all on account of Israel and his attempts to please her. About six months before this census-taking era, the old man had stepped into Miss Manners's kitchen with an unusual radiance on his wrinkles and in his eyes, and began without his usual morning greeting,—

"I've got so'thin' for you naow, Miss Lucindy. You're a master-hand for pets, but I'll bet a red cent you ha'n't an idee what I've got for ye naow!"

"I'm sure I can't tell, Israel," said she; "you'll have to let me see it."

"Well," said he, lifting up his coat and looking carefully behind him as he sat down on the settle, lest a stray kitten or chicken should preoccupy the bench, "you see I was down to Orrin's abaout a week back, and he hed a litter o' pigs,—eleven on 'em. Well, he couldn't raise the hull on 'em,—'t a'n't good to raise more 'n nine,—an' so he said, ef I'd 'a' had a place o' my own, I could 'a' had one on 'em, but, as't was, he guessed he'd hev to send one to market for a roaster. I went daown to the barn to see 'em, an' there was one, the cutest little critter I ever sot eyes on, and I've seen more 'n four pigs in my day,—'t was a little black-spotted one, as spry as an ant, and the dreffullest knowin' look out of its eyes! I fellowshipped it right off, and I said, says I, 'Orrin, ef you'll let me hev that 'ere little spotted feller, I'll git a place for him, for I do take to him consarnedly.' So he said I could, and I fetched him hum, and Miss Slater and me we kinder fed him up for a few days back, till he got sorter wonted, and I'm a-goin' to fetch him to you."

"But, Israel, I haven't any place to put him in."

"Well, that a'n't nothin' to hender. I'll jest fetch out them old boards out of the wood-shed, and knock up a little sty right off, daown by the end o' the shed, and you ken keep your swill that I've hed before, and it'll come handy."

"But pigs are so dirty!"

"I don't know as they be; they ha'n't no great conveniences for washin' ginerally; but I never heerd as they was dirtier 'n other critters, where they run wild. An' beside, that a'n't goin' to hender, nuther; I calculate to make it one o' the chores to take keer of him; 't won't cost no more to you; and I ha'n't no great opportunities to do things for folks that 's allers a-doin' for me; so't you needn't be afeard, Miss Lucindy: I love to."

Miss Lucinda's heart got the better of her judgment. A nature that could feel so tenderly for its inferiors in the scale could not be deaf to the tiny voices of humanity, when they reached her solitude; and she thanked Israel for the pig so heartily that the old man's face brightened still more, and his voice softened from its cracked harshness, as he said, clicking up and down the latch of the back-door,—

"Well, I'm sure you're as welcome as you are obleeged, and I'll knock up that 'ere pen right off; he sha'n't pester ye any,—that's a fact."

Strange to say,—yet perhaps it might have been expected from her proclivities,—Miss Lucinda took an astonishing fancy to the pig. Very few people know how intelligent an animal a pig is; but when one is regarded merely as pork and hams, one's intellect is apt to fall into neglect: a moral sentiment which applies out of Pigdom. This creature would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the "racers," and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog's, and "all but speakin'," as Israel said. He was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, he kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda enjoyed the possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her. Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so oppressively affectionate that he never could leave his mistress alone. If she lay down on her bed, he leaped up and unlatched the door, and stretched himself on the white counterpane beside her with a grunt of satisfaction; if she sat down to knit or sew, he laid his head and shoulders across her lap, or curled himself up on her knees; if she was cooking, he whined and coaxed round her till she hardly knew whether she fried or broiled her steak; and if she turned him out and buttoned the door, his cries were so pitiful she could never be resolute enough to keep him in exile five minutes,—for it was a prominent article in her creed, that animals have feelings that are easily wounded, and are of "like passions" with men, only incapable of expression.

Indeed, Miss Lucinda considered it the duty of human beings to atone to animals for the Lord's injustice in making them dumb and four-legged. She would have been rather startled at such an enunciation of her practice, but she was devoted to it as a practice: she would give her own chair to the cat and sit on the settle herself; get up at midnight, if a mew or a bark called her, though the thermometer was below zero; The tenderloin of her steak or the liver of her chicken was saved for a pining kitten or an ancient and toothless cat; and no disease or wound daunted her faithful nursing, or disgusted her devoted tenderness. It was rather hard on humanity, and rather reversive of Providence, that all this care and pains should be lavished on cats and dogs, while little morsels of flesh and blood, ragged, hungry, and immortal, wandered up and down the streets. Perhaps that they were immortal was their defence from Miss Lucinda; one might have hoped that her "other-worldliness" accepted that fact as enough to outweigh present pangs, if she had not openly declared, to Israel Slater's immense amusement and astonishment, that she believed creatures had souls,—little ones perhaps, but souls after all, and she did expect to see Pink again some time or other.

"Well, I hope he's got his tail feathered out ag'in," said Israel, dryly. "I do'no' but what hair'd grow as well as feathers in a sperctooal state, and I never see a pictur' of an angel but what hed consider'ble many feathers."

Miss Lucinda looked rather confounded. But humanity had one little revenge on her in the shape of her cat, a beautiful Maltese, with great yellow eyes, fur as soft as velvet, and silvery paws as lovely to look at as they were thistly to touch. Toby certainly pleaded hard for Miss Lucinda's theory of a soul; but his was no good one: some tricksy and malign little spirit had lent him his share of intellect, and he used it to the entire subjugation of Miss Lucinda. When he was hungry, he was as well-mannered and as amiable as a good child,—he would coax, and purr, and lick her fingers with his pretty red tongue, like a "perfect love"; but when he had his fill, and needed no more, then came Miss Lucinda's time of torment. If she attempted to caress him, he bit and scratched like a young tiger, he sprang at her from the floor and fastened on her arm with real fury; if he cried at the window and was not directly let in, as soon as he had achieved entrance his first manoeuvre was to dash at her ankles and bite them, if he could, as punishment for her tardiness. This skirmishing was his favorite mode of attack; if he was turned out of the closet, or off the pillow up-stairs, he retreated under the bed and made frantic sallies at her feet, till the poor woman got actually nervous, and if he was in the room made a flying leap as far as she could to her bed, to escape those keen claws. Indeed, old Israel found her more than once sitting in the middle of the kitchen-floor with Toby crouched for a spring under the table, his poor mistress afraid to move, for fear of her unlucky ankles. And this literally cat-ridden woman was hazed about and ruled over by her feline tyrant to that extent that he occupied the easiest chair, the softest cushion, the middle of the bed, and the front of the fire, not only undisturbed, but caressed. This is a veritable history, beloved reader, and I offer it as a warning and an example: if you will be an old maid, or if you can't help it, take to petting children, or donkeys, or even a respectable cow, but beware of domestic tyranny in any shape but man's!

No wonder Miss Lucinda took kindly to the pig, who had a house of his own, and a servant, as it were, to the avoidance of all trouble on her part,—the pig who capered for joy when she or Fun approached, and had so much expression in his physiognomy that one almost expected to see him smile. Many a sympathizing conference Miss Lucinda held with Israel over the perfections of Piggy, as he leaned against the sty and looked over at his favorite after this last chore was accomplished.

"I say for 't," exclaimed the old man, one day, "I b'lieve that cre'tur' knows enough to be professor in a college. Why, he talks! he re'lly doos: a leetle through his nose, maybe, but no more 'n Dr. Colton allers does,—'n' I declare he appears to have abaout as much sense. I never see the equal of him. I thought he'd 'a larfed right out yesterday, when I gin him that mess o' corn: he got up onto his forelegs on the trough, an' he winked them knowin' eyes o' his'n, an' waggled his tail, an' then he set off an' capered round till he come bunt up ag'inst the boards. I tell you,—that sorter sobered him; he gin a growlin' grunt, an' shook his ears, an' looked sideways at me, and then he put to and eet up that corn as sober as a judge. I swan! he doos beat the Dutch!"

But there was one calculation forgotten both by Miss Lucinda and Israel: the pig would grow,—and in consequence, as I said before, Miss Lucinda came to grief; for when the census-taker tinkled her sharp little door-bell, it called her from a laborious occupation at the sty,—no more and no less than trying to nail up a board that Piggy had torn down in struggling to get out of his durance. He had grown so large that Miss Lucinda was afraid of him; his long legs and their vivacious motion added to the shrewd intelligence of his eyes, and his nose seemed as formidable to this poor little woman as the tusk of a rhinoceros: but what should she do with him? One might as well have proposed to her to kill and cut up Israel as to consign Piggy to the "fate of race." She could not turn him into the street to starve, for she loved him; and the old maid suffered from a constancy that might have made some good man happy, but only embarrassed her with the pig. She could not keep him forever,—that was evident; she knew enough to be aware that time would increase his disabilities as a pet, and he was an expensive one now,—for the corn-swallowing capacities of a pig, one of the "racer" breed, are almost incredible, and nothing about Miss Lucinda wanted for food even to fatness. Besides, he was getting too big for his pen, and so "cute" an animal could not be debarred from all out-door pleasures, and tantalized by the sight of a green and growing garden before his eyes continually, without making an effort to partake of its delights. So, when Miss Lucinda indued herself with her brown linen sack and sun-bonnet to go and weed her carrot-patch, she was arrested on the way by a loud grunting and scrambling in Piggy's quarter, and found to her distress that he had contrived to knock off the upper board from his pen. She had no hammer at hand; so she seized a large stone that lay near by and pounded at the board till the twice-tinkling bell recalled her to the house, and as soon as she had made confession to the census-taker she went back,—alas, too late! Piggy had redoubled his efforts, another board had yielded, and he was free! What a thing freedom is! how objectionable in practice, how splendid in theory! More people than Miss Lucinda have been put to their wits' end when "Hoggie" burst his bonds and became rampant instead of couchant. But he enjoyed it; he made the tour of the garden on a delightful canter, brandishing his tail with an air of defiance that daunted his mistress at once, and regarding her with his small bright eyes as if he would before long taste her and see if she was as crisp as she looked. She retreated forthwith to the shed and caught up a broom with which she courageously charged upon Piggy, and was routed entirely; for, being no way alarmed by her demonstration, the creature capered directly at her, knocked her down, knocked the broom out of her hand, and capered away again to the young carrot-patch.

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Manners, gathering herself up from the ground,—"if there only was a man here!"

Suddenly she betook herself to her heels,—for the animal looked at her, and stopped eating: that was enough to drive Miss Lucinda off the field. And now, quite desperate, she rushed through the house and out of the front-door, actually in search of a man! Just down the street she saw one. Had she been composed, she might have noticed the threadbare cleanliness of his dress, the odd cap that crowned his iron-gray locks, and the peculiar manner of his walk; for our little old maid had stumbled upon no less a person than Monsieur Jean Leclerc, the dancing-master of Dalton. Not that this accomplishment was much in vogue in the embryo city; but still there were a few who liked to fit themselves for firemen's balls and sleighing-party frolics, and quite a large class of children were learning betimes such graces as children in New England receive more easily than their elders. Monsieur Leclerc had just enough scholars to keep his coat threadbare and restrict him to necessities; but he lived, and was independent. All this Miss Lucinda was ignorant of; she only saw a man, and, with the instinct of the sex in trouble or danger, she appealed to him at once.

"Oh, Sir! won't you step in and help me? My pig has got out, and I can't catch him, and he is ruining my garden!"

"Madame, I shall!" replied the Frenchman, bowing low, and assuming the first position.

So Monsieur Leclerc followed Miss Manners, and supplied himself with a mop that was hanging in the shed as his best weapon. Dire was the battle between the pig and the Frenchman. They skipped past each other and back again as if they were practising for a cotillon. Piggy had four legs, which gave him a certain advantage; but the Frenchman had most brain, and in the long run brain gets the better of legs. A weary dance they led each other, but after a while the pet was hemmed in a corner, and Miss Lucinda had run for a rope to tie him, when, just as she returned, the beast made a desperate charge, upset his opponent, and giving a leap in the wrong direction, to his manifest astonishment, landed in his own sty! Miss Lucinda's courage rose; she forgot her prostrate friend in need, and, running to the pen, caught up hammer and nail-box on her way, and, with unusual energy, nailed up the bars stronger than ever, and then bethought herself to thank the stranger. But there he lay quite still and pale.

"Dear me!" said Miss Manners, "I hope you haven't hurt yourself, Sir?"

"I have fear that I am hurt, Madame," said he, trying to smile. "I cannot to move but it pains me."

"Where is it? Is it your leg or your arm? Try and move one at a time," said Miss Lucinda, promptly.