May 29th.--C---- is leaving me, to my unspeakable relief; for he has had
a bad cold, which caused him to be much more troublesome and less amusing
than might otherwise have been the case.
May 31st.--. . . . I get along admirably, and am at this moment
superintending the corned beef, which has been on the fire, as it appears
to me, ever since the beginning of time, and shows no symptom of being
done before the crack of doom. Mrs. Hale says it must boil till it
becomes tender; and so it shall, if I can find wood to keep the fire
a-going.
Meantime, I keep my station in the dining-room, and read or write as
composedly as in my own study. Just now, there came a very important rap
at the front door, and I threw down a smoked herring which I had begun to
eat, as there is no hope of the corned beef to-day, and went to admit the
visitor. Who should it be but Ben B------, with a very peculiar and
mysterious grin upon his face! He put into my hand a missive directed to
"Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne." It contained a little bit of card, signifying
that Dr. L. F------ and Miss C. B------ receive their friends Thursday
eve, June 6. I am afraid I shall be too busy washing my dishes to pay
many visits. The washing of dishes does seem to me the most absurd and
unsatisfactory business that I ever undertook. If, when once washed,
they would remain clean for ever and ever (which they ought in all reason
to do, considering how much trouble it is), there would be less occasion
to grumble; but no sooner is it done, than it requires to be done again.
On the whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more than one dish
at each meal. However, I moralize deeply on this and other matters, and
have discovered that all the trouble and affliction in the world come
from the necessity of cleansing away our earthly stains.
I ate the last morsel of bread yesterday, and congratulate myself on
being now reduced to the fag-end of necessity. Nothing worse can happen,
according to ordinary modes of thinking, than to want bread; but, like
most afflictions, it is more in prospect than reality. I found one
cracker in the tureen, and exulted over it as if it had been so much
gold. However, I have sent a petition to Mrs. P------ stating my
destitute condition, and imploring her succor; and, till it arrive, I
shall keep myself alive on herrings and apples, together with part of a
pint of milk, which I share with Leo. He is my great trouble now, though
an excellent companion too. But it is not easy to find food for him,
unless I give him what is fit for Christians,--though, for that matter,
he appears to be as good a Christian as most laymen, or even as some of
the clergy. I fried some pouts and eels, yesterday, on purpose for him,
for he does not like raw fish. They were very good, but I should hardly
have taken the trouble on my own account.
George P------ has just come to say that Mrs. P------ has no bread at
present, and is gone away this afternoon, but that she will send me some
to-morrow. I mean to have a regular supply from the same source. . . . .
You cannot imagine how much the presence of Leo relieves the feeling of
perfect loneliness. He insists upon being in the room with me all the
time, except at night, when he sleeps in the shed, and I do not find
myself severe enough to drive him out. He accompanies me likewise in all
my walks to the village and elsewhere; and, in short, keeps at my heels
all the time, except when I go down cellar. Then he stands at the head
of the stairs and howls, as if he never expected to see me again. He is
evidently impressed with the present solitude of our old abbey, both on
his own account and mine, and feels that he may assume a greater degree
of intimacy than would be otherwise allowable. He will be easily brought
within the old regulations after your return.
P. S. 3 o'clock.--The beef is done!!!
Concord. The old Manse. June 2d.--. . . . Everything goes on well with
me. At the time of writing my last letter, I was without bread. Well,
just at supper-time came Mrs. B------ with a large covered dish, which
proved to contain a quantity of specially good flapjacks, piping hot,
prepared, I suppose, by the fair hands of Miss Martha or Miss Abby, for
Mrs. P------ was not at home. They served me both for supper and
breakfast; and I thanked Providence and the young ladies, and compared
myself to the prophet fed by ravens,--though the simile does rather more
than justice to myself, and not enough to the generous donors of the
flapjacks. The next morning, Mrs. P------ herself brought two big loaves
of bread, which will last me a week, unless I have some guests to provide
for. I have likewise found a hoard of crackers in one of the covered
dishes; so that the old castle is sufficiently provisioned to stand a
long siege. The corned beef is exquisitely done, and as tender as a
young lady's heart, all owing to my skilful cookery; for I consulted Mrs.
Hale at every step, and precisely followed her directions. To say the
truth, I look upon it as such a masterpiece in its way, that it seems
irreverential to eat it. Things on which so much thought and labor are
bestowed should surely be immortal. . . . . Leo and I attended divine
services this morning in a temple not made with hands. We went to the
farthest extremity of Peter's path, and there lay together under an oak,
on the verge of the broad meadow.
Concord, June 6th.--. . . . Mr. F------ arrived yesterday, and appeared
to be in most excellent health, and as happy as the sunshine. About the
first thing he did was to wash the dishes; and he is really indefatigable
in the kitchen, so that I am quite a gentleman of leisure. Previous to
his arrival, I had kindled no fire for four entire days, and had lived
all that time on the corned beef, except one day, when Ellery and I went
down the river on a fishing excursion. Yesterday, we boiled some lamb,
which we shall have cold for dinner to-day. This morning, Mr. F------
fried a sumptuous dish of eels for breakfast. Mrs. P------ continues to
be the instrument of Providence, and yesterday sent us a very nice plum.
pudding,
I have told Mr. F------ that I shall be engaged in the forenoons, and he
is to manage his own occupations and amusements during that time. . . . .
Leo, I regret to say, has fallen under suspicion of a very great crime,--
nothing less than murder,--a fowl crime it may well be called, for it is
the slaughter of one of Mr. Hayward's hens. He has been seen to chase
the hens, several times, and the other day one of them was found dead.
Possibly he may be innocent, and, as there is nothing but circumstantial
evidence, it must be left with his own conscience.
Meantime, Mr. Hayward, or somebody else, seems to have given him such a
whipping that he is absolutely stiff, and walks about like a rheumatic
old gentleman. I am afraid, too, that he is an incorrigible thief.
Ellery says he has seen him coming up the avenue with a calf's whole head
in his mouth. How he came by it is best known to Leo himself. If he
were a dog of fair character, it would be no more than charity to
conclude that he had either bought it, or had it given to him; but with
the other charges against him, it inclines me to great distrust of his
moral principles. Be that as it may, he managed his stock of provisions
very thriftily,--burying it in the earth, and eating a portion of it
whenever he felt an appetite. If he insists upon living by highway
robbery, it would be well to make him share his booty with us. . . . .
June 10th.--. . . . Mr. F------ is in perfect health, and absolutely in
the seventh heaven, and he talks and talks and talks and talks; and I
listen and listen and listen with a patience for which, in spite of all
my sins, I firmly expect to be admitted to the mansions of the blessed.
And there is really a contentment in being able to make this poor,
world-worn, hopeless, half-crazy man so entirely comfortable as he seems
to be here. He is an admirable cook. We had some roast veal and a baked
rice-pudding on Sunday, really a fine dinner, and cooked in better style
than Mary can equal; and George Curtis came to dine with us. Like all
male cooks, he is rather expensive, and has a tendency to the consumption
of eggs in his various concoctions. . . . . I have had my dreams of
splendor; but never expected to arrive at the dignity of keeping a
man-cook. At first we had three meals a day, but now only two. . . . .
* * * * * *
We dined at Mr. Emerson's the other day, in company with Mr. Hedge. Mr.
Bradford has been to see us two or three times. . . . . He looks thinner
than ever.
[PASSAGES FROM NOTE-BOOKS.]
May 5th, 1850.--I left Portsmouth last Wednesday, at the quarter past
twelve, by the Concord Railroad, which at New Market unites with the
Boston and Maine Railroad about ten miles from Portsmouth. The station
at New Market is a small wooden building, with one railroad passing on
one side, and another on another, and the two crossing each other at
right angles. At a little distance stands a black, large, old, wooden
church, with a square tower, and broken windows, and a great rift through
the middle of the roof, all in a stage of dismal ruin and decay. A
farm-house of the old style, with a long sloping roof, and as black as
the church, stands on the opposite side of the road, with its barns; and
these are all the buildings in sight of the railroad station. On the
Concord rail, in the train of cars, with the locomotive puffing, and
blowing off its steam, and making a great bluster in that lonely place,
while along the other railroad stretches the desolate track, with the
withered weeds growing up betwixt the two lines of iron, all so desolate.
And anon you hear a low thunder running along these iron rails; it grows
louder; an object is seen afar off; it approaches rapidly, and comes down
upon you like fate, swift and inevitable. In a moment, it dashes along
in front of the station-house, and comes to a pause, the locomotive
hissing and fuming in its eagerness to go on. How much life has come at
once into this lonely place! Four or five long cars, each, perhaps, with
fifty people in it, reading newspapers, reading pamphlet novels,
chattering, sleeping; all this vision of passing life! A moment passes,
while the luggage-men are putting on the trunks and packages; then the
bell strikes a few times, and away goes the train again, quickly out of
sight of those who remain behind, while a solitude of hours again broods
over the station-house, which, for an instant, has thus been put in
communication with far-off cities, and then remains by itself, with the
old, black, ruinous church, and the black old farm-house, both built
years and years ago, before railroads were ever dreamed of. Meantime,
the passenger, stepping from the solitary station into the train, finds
himself in the midst of a new world all in a moment. He rushes out of
the solitude into a village; thence, through woods and hills, into a
large inland town; beside the Merrimack, which has overflowed its banks,
and eddies along, turbid as a vast mud-puddle, sometimes almost laving
the doorstep of a house, and with trees standing in the flood half-way up
their trunks. Boys, with newspapers to sell, or apples and lozenges;
many passengers departing and entering, at each new station; the more
permanent passenger, with his check or ticket stuck in his hat-band,
where the conductor may see it. A party of girls, playing at ball with a
young man. Altogether it is a scene of stirring life, with which a
person who had been waiting long for the train to come might find it
difficult at once to amalgamate himself.
It is a sombre, brooding day, and begins to rain as the cars pass onward.
In a little more than two hours we find ourselves in Boston surrounded by
eager hackmen.
Yesterday I went to the Athenaeum, and, being received with great
courtesy by Mr. Folsom, was shown all over the edifice from the very
bottom to the very top, whence I looked out over Boston. It is an
admirable point of view; but, it being an overcast and misty day, I did
not get the full advantage of it. The library is in a noble hall, and
looks splendidly with its vista of alcoves. The most remarkable sight,
however, was Mr. Hildreth, writing his history of the United States. He
sits at a table, at the entrance of one of the alcoves, with his books
and papers before him, as quiet and absorbed as he would be in the
loneliest study; now consulting an authority; now penning a sentence or a
paragraph, without seeming conscious of anything but his subject. It is
very curious thus to have a glimpse of a book in process of creation
under one's eye. I know not how many hours he sits there; but while I
saw him he was a pattern of diligence and unwandering thought. He had
taken himself out of the age, and put himself, I suppose, into that about
which he was writing. Being deaf, he finds it much the easier to
abstract himself. Nevertheless, it is a miracle. He is a thin,
middle-aged man, in black, with an intelligent face, rather sensible than
scholarlike.
Mr. Folsom accompanied me to call upon Mr. Ticknor, the historian of
Spanish literature. He has a fine house, at the corner of Park and
Beacon Streets, perhaps the very best position in Boston. A marble hall,
a wide and easy staircase, a respectable old man-servant evidently long
at home in the mansion, to admit us. We entered the library, Mr. Folsom
considerably in advance, as being familiar with the house; and I heard
Mr. Ticknor greet him in friendly tones, their scholar-like and
bibliographical pursuits, I suppose, bringing them into frequent
conjunction. Then I was introduced, and received with great distinction,
but yet without any ostentatious flourish of courtesy. Mr. Ticknor has a
great head, and his hair is gray or grayish. You recognize in him at
once the man who knows the world, the scholar, too, which probably is his
more distinctive character, though a little more under the surface. He
was in his slippers; a volume of his book was open on a table, and
apparently he had been engaged in revising or annotating it. His library
is a stately and beautiful room for a private dwelling, and itself looks
large and rich. The fireplace has a white marble frame about it,
sculptured with figures and reliefs. Over it hung a portrait of Sir
Walter Scott, a copy, I think, of the one that represents him in Melrose
Abbey.
Mr. Ticknor was most kind in his alacrity to solve the point on which Mr.
Folsom, in my behalf, had consulted him (as to whether there had been any
English translation of the Tales of Cervantes); and most liberal in his
offers of books from his library. Certainly, he is a fine example of a
generous-principled scholar, anxious to assist the human intellect in its
efforts and researches. Methinks he must have spent a happy life (as
happiness goes among mortals), writing his great three-volumed book for
twenty years; writing it, not for bread, nor with any uneasy desire of
fame, but only with a purpose to achieve something true and enduring. He
is, I apprehend, a man of great cultivation and refinement, and with
quite substance enough to be polished and refined, without being worn too
thin in the process,--a man of society. He related a singular story of
an attempt of his to become acquainted with me years ago, when he mistook
my kinsman Eben for me.
At half past four, I went to Mr. Thompson's, the artist who has requested
to paint my picture. This was the second sitting. The portrait looked
dimly out from the canvas, as from a cloud, with something that I could
recognize as my outline, but no strong resemblance as yet. I have had
three portraits taken before this,--an oil picture, a miniature, and a
crayon sketch,--neither of them satisfactory to those most familiar with
my physiognomy. In fact, there is no such thing as a true portrait; they
are all delusions, and I never saw any two alike, nor hardly any two that
I would recognize, merely by the portraits themselves, as being of the
same man. A bust has more reality. This artist is a man of thought, and
with no mean idea of his art; a Swedenborgian, or, as he prefers to call
it, a member of the New Church; and I have generally found something
marked in men who adopt that faith. He had painted a good picture of
Bryant. He seems to me to possess truth in himself, and to aim at it in
his artistic endeavors.
May 6th.--This morning it is an easterly rain (south-easterly, I should
say just now at twelve o'clock), and I went at nine, by appointment, to
sit for my picture. The artist painted awhile; but soon found that he
had not so much light as was desirable, and complained that his tints
were as muddy as the weather. Further sitting was therefore postponed
till to-morrow at eleven. It will be a good picture; but I see no
assurance, as yet, of the likeness. An artist's apartment is always very
interesting to me, with its pictures, finished and unfinished; its little
fancies in the pictorial way,--as here two sketches of children among
flowers and foliage, representing Spring and Summer, Winter and Autumn
being yet to come out of the artist's mild; the portraits of his wife and
children; here a clergyman, there a poet; here a woman with the stamp of
reality upon her, there a feminine conception which we feel not to have
existed. There was an infant Christ, or rather a child Christ, not
unbeautiful, but scarcely divine. I love the odor of paint in an
artist's room; his palette and all his other tools have a mysterious
charm for me. The pursuit has always interested my imagination more than
any other, and I remember before having my first portrait taken, there
was a great bewitchery in the idea, as if it were a magic process. Even
now, it is not without interest to me.
I left Mr. Thompson before ten, and took my way through the sloppy
streets to the Athenaeum, where I looked over the newspapers and
periodicals, and found two of my old stories (Peter Goldthwaite and the
Shaker Bridal) published as original in the last London Metropolitan!
The English are much more unscrupulous and dishonest pirates than
ourselves. However, if they are poor enough to perk themselves in such
false feathers as these, Heaven help them! I glanced over the stories,
and they seemed painfully cold and dull. It is the more singular that
these should be so published, inasmuch as the whole book was republished
in London, only a few months ago. Mr. Fields tells me that two
publishers in London had advertised the Scarlet Letter as in press, each
book at a shilling.
* * * * * *
Certainly life is made much more tolerable, and man respects himself far
more, when he takes his meals with a certain degree of order and state.
There should be a sacred law in these matters; and, as consecrating the
whole business, the preliminary prayer is a good and real ordinance. The
advance of man from a savage and animal state may be as well measured by
his mode and morality of dining, as by any other circumstance. At Mr.
Fields's, soon after entering the house, I heard the brisk and cheerful
notes of a canary-bird, singing with great vivacity, and making its voice
echo through the large rooms. It was very pleasant, at the close of the
rainy, east-windy day, and seemed to fling sunshine through the dwelling.
May 7th.--I did not go out yesterday afternoon, but after tea I went to
Parker's. The drinking and smoking shop is no bad place to see one kind
of life. The front apartment is for drinking. The door opens into Court
Square, and is denoted, usually, by some choice specimens of dainties
exhibited in the windows, or hanging beside the door-post; as, for
instance, a pair of canvas-back ducks, distinguishable by their
delicately mottled feathers; an admirable cut of raw beefsteak; a ham,
ready boiled, and with curious figures traced in spices on its outward
fat; a half, or perchance the whole, of a large salmon, when in season; a
bunch of partridges, etc., etc. A screen stands directly before the
door, so as to conceal the interior from an outside barbarian. At the
counter stand, at almost all hours,--certainly at all hours when I have
chanced to observe,--tipplers, either taking a solitary glass, or
treating all round, veteran topers, flashy young men, visitors from the
country, the various petty officers connected with the law, whom the
vicinity of the Court-House brings hither. Chiefly, they drink plain
liquors, gin, brandy, or whiskey, sometimes a Tom and Jerry, a gin
cocktail (which the bar-tender makes artistically, tossing it in a large
parabola from one tumbler to another, until fit for drinking), a
brandy-smash, and numerous other concoctions. All this toping goes
forward with little or no apparent exhilaration of spirits; nor does this
seem to be the object sought,--it being rather, I imagine, to create a
titillation of the coats of the stomach and a general sense of
invigoration, without affecting the brain. Very seldom does a man grow
wild and unruly.
The inner room is hung round with pictures and engravings of various
kinds,--a painting of a premium ox, a lithograph of a Turk and of a
Turkish lady, . . . . and various showily engraved tailors'
advertisements, and other shop-bills; among them all, a small painting of
a drunken toper, sleeping on a bench beside the grog-shop,--a ragged,
half-hatless, bloated, red-nosed, jolly, miserable-looking devil, very
well done, and strangely suitable to the room in which it hangs. Round
the walls are placed some half a dozen marble-topped tables, and a
centre-table in the midst; most of them strewn with theatrical and other
show-bills; and the large theatre-bills, with their type of gigantic
solidity and blackness, hung against the walls.
Last evening, when I entered, there was one guest somewhat overcome with
liquor, and slumbering with his chair tipped against one of the marble
tables. In the course of a quarter of an hour, he roused himself (a
plain, middle-aged man), and went out with rather an unsteady step, and a
hot, red face. One or two others were smoking, and looking over the
papers, or glancing at a play-bill. From the centre of the ceiling
descended a branch with two gas-burners, which sufficiently illuminated
every corner of the room. Nothing is so remarkable in these bar-rooms
and drinking-places, as the perfect order that prevails: if a man gets
drunk, it is no otherwise perceptible than by his going to sleep, or his
inability to walk.
Pacing the sidewalk in front of this grog-shop of Parker's (or sometimes,
on cold and rainy days, taking his station inside), there is generally to
be observed an elderly ragamuffin, in a dingy and battered hat, an old
surtout, and a more than shabby general aspect; a thin face and red nose,
a patch over one eye, and the other half drowned in moisture. He leans
in a slightly stooping posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing
nobody, but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness.
he is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of
his life, but, falling into decay (perhaps by dint of too frequent visits
at Parker's bar), he now haunts about the place, as a ghost haunts the
spot where he was murdered, "to collect his rents," as Parker says,--that
is, to catch an occasional ninepence from some charitable acquaintances,
or a glass of liquor at the bar. The word "ragamuffin," which I have
used above, does not accurately express the man, because there is a sort
of shadow or delusion of respectability about him, and a sobriety too,
and a kind of decency in his groggy and red-nosed destitution.
Underground, beneath the drinking and smoking rooms, is Parker's
eating-hall, extending all the way to Court Street. All sorts of good
eating may be had there, and a gourmand may feast at what expense he
will.
I take an interest in all the nooks and crannies and every development of
cities; so here I try to make a description of the view from the back
windows of a house in the centre of Boston, at which I now glance in the
intervals of writing. The view is bounded, at perhaps thirty yards'
distance, by a row of opposite brick dwellings, standing, I think, on
Temple Place; houses of the better order, with tokens of genteel families
visible in all the rooms betwixt the basements and the attic windows in
the roof; plate-glass in the rear drawing-rooms, flower-pots in some of
the windows of the upper stories. Occasionally, a lady's figure, either
seated or appearing with a flitting grace, or dimly manifest farther
within the obscurity of the room. A balcony, with a wrought-iron fence
running along under the row of drawing-room windows, above the basement.
In the space betwixt the opposite row of dwellings and that in which I am
situated are the low out-houses of the above-described houses, with flat
roofs; or solid brick walls, with walks on them, and high railings, for
the convenience of the washerwomen in hanging out their clothes. In the
intervals are grass-plots, already green, because so sheltered; and
fruit-trees, now beginning to put forth their leaves, and one of them, a
cherry-tree, almost in full blossom. Birds flutter and sing among these
trees. I should judge it a good site for the growth of delicate fruit;
for, quite enclosed on all sides by houses, the blighting winds cannot
molest the trees. They have sunshine on them a good part of the day,
though the shadow must come early, and I suppose there is a rich soil
about the roots. I see grapevines clambering against one wall, and also
peeping over another, where the main body of the vine is invisible to me.
In another place, a frame is erected for a grapevine, and probably it
will produce as rich clusters as the vines of Madeira, here in the heart
of the city, in this little spot of fructifying earth, while the thunder
of wheels rolls about it on every side. The trees are not all
fruit-trees. One pretty well-grown buttonwood-tree aspires upward above
the roofs of the houses. In the full verdure of summer, there will be
quite a mass or curtain of foliage between the hither and the thither row
of houses.
Afternoon.--At eleven, I went to give Mr. Thompson a sitting for my
picture. I like the painter. He seems to reverence his art and to aim
at truth in it, as I said before; a man of gentle disposition too, and
simplicity of life and character. I seated myself in the pictorial
chair, with the only light in the room descending upon me from a high
opening, almost at the ceiling, the rest of the sole window being
shuttered. He began to work, and we talked in an idle and desultory
way,--neither of us feeling very conversable,--which he attributed to the
atmosphere, it being a bright, west-windy, bracing day. We talked about
the pictures of Christ, and how inadequate and untrue they are. He said
he thought artists should attempt only to paint child-Christs, human
powers being inadequate to the task of painting such purity and holiness
in a manly development. Then he said that an idea of a picture had
occurred to him that morning, while reading a chapter in the New
Testament,--how "they parted his garments among them, and for his vesture
did cast lots." His picture was to represent the soldier to whom the
garment without a seam had fallen, after taking it home and examining it,
and becoming impressed with a sense of the former wearer's holiness. I
do not quite see how he would make such a picture tell its own story;--
but I find the idea suggestive to my own mind, and I think I could make
something of it. We talked of physiognomy and impressions of character,
--first impressions,--and how apt they are to come aright in the face of
the closest subsequent observation.
There were several visitors in the course of the sitting, one a
gentleman, a connection from the country, with whom the artist talked
about family matters and personal affairs,--observing on the poorness of
his own business, and that he had thoughts of returning to New York. I
wish he would meet with better success. Two or three ladies also looked
in. Meanwhile Mr. Thompson had been painting with more and more
eagerness, casting quick, keen glances at me, and then making hasty
touches on the picture, as if to secure with his brush what he had caught
with his eye. He observed that he was just getting interested in the
work, and I could recognize the feeling that was in him as akin to what I
have experienced myself in the glow of composition. Nevertheless, he
seemed able to talk about foreign matters, through it all. He continued
to paint in this rapid way, up to the moment of closing the sitting; when
he took the canvas from the easel, without giving me time to mark what
progress he had made, as he did the last time.
The artist is middle-sized, thin, a little stooping, with a quick,
nervous movement. He has black hair, not thick, a beard under his chin,
a small head, but well-developed forehead, black eyebrows, eyes keen, but
kindly, and a dark face, not indicating robust health, but agreeable in
its expression. His voice is gentle and sweet, and such as comes out
from amidst refined feelings. He dresses very simply and unpictorially
in a gray frock or sack, and does not seem to think of making a picture
of himself in his own person.
At dinner to-day there was a young Frenchman, whom ------ befriended a
year or so ago, when he had not another friend in America, and obtained
employment for him in a large dry-goods establishment. He is a young man
of eighteen or thereabouts, with smooth black hair, neatly dressed; his
face showing a good disposition, but with nothing of intellect or
character. It is funny to think of this poor little Frenchman, a
Parisian too, eating our most un-French victuals,--our beefsteaks, and
roasts, and various homely puddings and hams, and all things most
incongruent to his hereditary stomach; but nevertheless he eats most
cheerfully and uncomplainingly. He has not a large measure of French
vivacity, never rattles, never dances, nor breaks into ebullitions of
mirth and song; on the contrary, I have never known a youth of his age
more orderly and decorous. He is kind-hearted and grateful, and evinces
his gratitude to the mother of the family and to his benefactress by
occasional presents, not trifling when measured by his small emolument of
five dollars per week. Just at this time he is confined to his room by
indisposition, caused, it is suspected, by a spree on Sunday last. Our
gross Saxon orgies would soon be the ruin of his French constitution.
A thought to-day. Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the
whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their
great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round
about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.
