The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851

Just then Benson and Ludlow came up, the former under much excitement, and the latter in a sad state of profanity. As they both insisted on talking at once, it was some time before either was intelligible; at length Ashburner made out that the excursion had met with a double check. In the first place, all the bachelors had demanded that Mrs. Harrison should be of the party, in which they were sustained by Löwenberg, who, though partly naturalized by his marriage, still considered himself sufficiently a stranger to be above all spirit of clique. All the other married men had objected, but the Harrisonites ultimately carried their point. Of the two principal opponents, Ludlow was fairly talked off his feet by the voluble patois of Löwenberg, and Benson completely put down by the laconic and inflexible Sumner. So far so bad, but worse was to follow; for after the horses had been ordered, and most of the ladies, including the Robinsons, bonneted and shawled for the start, the lionne, who had, doubtless, heard of the unsuccessful attempt to blackball her, and wished to make a further trial of her power, suddenly professed a headache, whereupon her partisans almost unanimously declared that, as she couldn't go, they didn't want to go; and thus the whole affair had fallen through. Such was the substance of their melancholy intelligence, which they had hardly finished communicating when a dea ex machina appeared in the person of Mrs. Benson. She declared that it was "a shame," and "too bad," and she "had never," &c.; and brought her remarks to a practical conclusion by vowing that she would go, at any rate, whoever chose to stay with that woman; "and if no one else goes with us I'm sure Mr. Ashburner will:" at which Ashburner was fain to express his readiness to follow her to the end of the world, if necessary. Then she followed up her advantage by sending a message to Sumner, which took him captive immediately; and as she was well seconded by the Robinsons, who on their part had brought over Le Roi, the party was soon reorganized pretty much on its original footing. When the cause of all the trouble found herself likely to be left in a minority her headache vanished immediately, in time for her to secure beaux enough to fill her barouche, and Mr. Harrison was put into a carriage with the musicians. Mrs. Benson's vehicle was equally well filled; and Harry, who, by his wife's orders, and much against his own will, had lent his wagon and ponies to a young Southerner that was doing the amiable to Miss Vanderlyn, had nothing left for it but to go on horseback; in which Ashburner undertook to join him, having heard that there was a good bit of turf on the road to the glen.

"If you go that way," said Mrs. Robinson, when he announced his intention, "you will have another companion. Mr. Edwards means to ride."

Ashburner had seen Edwards driving a magnificent trotter about Oldport, but could not exactly fancy him outside of a horse, and conjectured that he would not make quite so good a figure as when leading the redowa down a long ball-room. But the hero of the dance was not forthcoming for some time, so they mounted, Benson his pet Charlie, and the Englishman the best horse the stables of Oldport could furnish, which it is hardly necessary to say was not too good a one, and were leaving the village leisurely to give the carriages a good start of them, when they heard close behind the patter of a light-stepping horse, and the next moment Tom Edwards ranged up along side. The little man rode a bright bay mare, rising above fifteen hands, nearly full-blooded, but stepping steadily and evenly, without any of that fidget and constant change of gait which renders so many blood-horses any thing but agreeable to ride, and carrying her head and tail to perfection. He wore white cord trousers, a buff waistcoat, and a very natty white hair-cloth cap. His coat was something between a summer sack and a cutaway,—the color, a rich green of some peculiar and indescribable shade. His spurs were very small, but highly polished; and, instead of a whip, he carried a little red cane with a carved ivory head. In his marvellously fitting white buckskin glove he managed a rein of some mysterious substance that looked like a compound of india-rubber and sea-weed. He sat his mare beautifully—with a little too much aim at effect, perhaps; but gracefully and firmly at the same time. Ashburner glanced at his own poor beast and wished for Daredevil, whose antics he had frequently controlled with great success at Devilshoof; and Benson could not help looking a little mortified, for Charlie was not very well off for tail, and had recollections of his harness days, which made him drop his head at times and pull like a steam engine; besides which, Harry—partly, perhaps, from motives of economy, partly, as he said, because he thought it snobbish to ride in handsome toggery—always mounted in the oldest clothes he had, and with a well-used bridle and saddle. But there was no help for it now, so off the three went together at a fair trot, and soon overtook most of the party, Edwards putting his spurs into the bay mare and showing off her points and his horsemanship at every successive vehicle they passed.

The piece of turf which Benson had promised his friend was not quite so smooth as Newmarket heath, but it was more than three-quarters of a mile long, and sufficiently level to be a great improvement on the heavy and sandy road. So unaccustomed, however, are Americans to "riding on grass," that Edwards could not be persuaded to quit the main path until Benson had repeatedly challenged him to a trot on the green. As soon as the two horses were fairly along-side they went off, without waiting the signal from their riders, at a pace which kept Ashburner at a hand-gallop. For awhile they were neck-and-neck, Benson and Charlie hauling against each other, the rider with his weight thrown back in the stirrups and laboring to keep his "fast crab" from breaking, while the mare struck out beautifully with a moderate pull of the rein. Then as Benson, who carried no whip, began to get his horse more in hand, he raised a series of yells in true jockey fashion, to encourage his own animal and to break up Edwards's. The mare skipped—Tom caught her in an instant, but she fell off in her stroke from being held up, and Charlie headed her a length; then he gave her her head, and she broke—once, twice, three times; and every time Benson drew in his horse, who was now well settled down to his work, and waited for Edwards to come on. At last, his mare and he both lost their tempers at once. She started for a run, and he dropped the reins on her back and let her go. At the same instant Benson stuck both spurs into Charlie, who was a rare combination of trotter and runner, and away went the two at full gallop. Ashburner's hack was left behind at once, but he could see them going on close together, tooling their horses capitally; Edwards's riding, being the more graceful, and Benson's the more workmanlike; the mare leading a trifle, as he thought, and Charlie pressing her close. Suddenly Edwards waved his cane as in triumph, but the next moment he and his mare disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them up, while Benson's horse sheered off ten feet to the left.

From the Southern Literary Messenger

TO ONE IN AFFLICTION

By John R. Thompson

Dear friend! if word of mine could seal
The bitter fount of all thy tears,
And, through the future's cloudy years,
Some glimpse of sunshine yet reveal—
That word I might not dare to speak:
A father's sorrow o'er his child
So sacred seems and undefiled,
To bid it cease we may not seek.
Thy little boy has passed away
From mortal sight and mortal love,
To join the shining choir above
And dwell amid the perfect day;
All robed in spotless innocence,
And fittest for celestial things,
O'ershadowed by her rustling wings
The angel softly led him hence:
As pure as if the gentle rain
Of his baptismal morn had sought
His bosom's depths, and e'ery thought
Had sweetly cleansed from earthly stain:
Such blest assurance brings, I know,
To bleeding hearts but sad relief—
The dark and troubled tide of grief
Must have its ebb and flow—
And most of all when thou dost plod,
Alone, upon these wintry days,
Along the old familiar ways
Wherein his little feet have trod.
And thou dost treasure up his words,
The fragments of his earnest talk,
On some remembered morning walk,
When, at the song of earliest birds,
He'd ask of thee, with charméd look,
And smile upon his features spread,
Whose careful hand the birds had fed,
And filled the ever-running brook?
Or viewing, from the distant glade,
The dim horizon round his home,
With simplest speech and air would come
And ask why were the mountains made?
Be strong, my friend, these days of doom
Are but the threads of darkest hue,
That daily enter to renew
The warp of the Eternal Loom.
And when to us it shall be given
In joy to see the other side
These threads the brightest shall abide
In the fair tapestries of Heaven!

From Blackwood's Magazine

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE

By Pisistratus Caxton

Continued from page 421

PART VI

CHAPTER XIII

Whatever may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the Parson's, charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant boy to go and ask pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration. And, to Mrs. Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his lessons at school; nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his mother's holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly; and the Parson thought it better to temporize as to the more unpalatable demand. Unluckily Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized. Though Stirn at first kept his own counsel, the Tinker blabbed the whole affair. And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn told his story, as the Tinker had told his own; both tales were very unfavorable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern boy had broken the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain; the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out the misdemeanors of his equals; therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded pattern boy and baffled spy, could expect no mercy;—he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.

It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster, and under the eye of Mr. Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the moment those checks were removed, popular persecution began.

Some pointed and mowed at him; some cursed him for a sneak, and all shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed through the village at dusk, "Who was put in the stocks?—baa!" "Who got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?—baa!" To resist this species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and a colder temper than our poor pattern boy's. He took his resolution at once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr. Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to the Doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red silk umbrella over his head.

"Please, sir, if you'll be good enough to take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honor night and day; and as for the wages, mother says 'just suit yourself, sir.'"

"My child," said the Doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them by-and-by."

Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the vacant chair, where he had so long sate in the place of her beloved Mark; and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to itself, that she could bear it no longer.

Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny—perhaps more so; and one morning she hailed the Steward as he was trotting his hog-maned cob beside the door, and bade him tell the Squire that "she would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice for the land and premises she held—there were plenty to step into the place at a much better rent."

"You're a fool," said the good-natured Steward; "and I'm very glad you did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You've been doing extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."

"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feeling," said the widow. "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I should like to go and live near him."

"Ah, yes—I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino—more fool he; but, bless your heart, 'tis no distance—two miles or so. Can't he come home every night after work?"

"No, sir," exclaimed the widow almost fiercely; "he shan't come home here, to be called bad names and jeered at!—he whom my dead good man was so fond and proud of. No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I said to Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the Squire hisself. Not that I don't thank him for all favors—he be a good gentleman if let alone; but he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin. Pardin for what, I should like to know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha' seen his nose, sir—as big as your two fists. Ax pardin! If the Squire had had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha' axing. But I let's the passion get the better of me—I humbly beg you'll excuse it, sir. I'm no scollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have been, if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore just get the Squire to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and what's on the grounds and orchard, the new-comer will no doubt settle that."

The Steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to relinquish her resolution, took her message to the Squire. Mr. Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal to make the amende honorable to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son. It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle, since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent his "Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and brusque enough on her own account, and in such business as might especially be transacted between herself and the cottagers, yet she never appeared as the delegate of her lord except in the capacity of a herald-of-peace and mediating angel. It was with good heart, too, that she undertook this mission, since, as we have seen, both mother and son were great favorites of hers. She entered the cottage with the friendliest beam in her bright blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank cordial voice that she accosted the widow. But she was no more successful than the Steward had been. The truth is, that I don't believe the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with when his sense of dignity is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as the same peasant. He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is true, from his superiors, (though, thank Heaven! that he rarely meets with unjustly;) but to be looked down upon, and mocked, and pointed at by his own equals—his own little world—cuts him to the soul. And if you can succeed in breaking his pride, and destroying this sensitiveness, then he is a lost being. He can never recover his self-esteem, and you have chucked him half way—a stolid, inert, sullen victim—to the perdition of the prison or the convict-ship.