George Alfred Townsend

“ The Great Dipper replied: "Nobody can be said to live who has lost his stomach. We make no other distinction here. There are thousands who have lost them, however, and who deceive mankind. Even these, you perceive, who drink at the High Rock Spring, flirt while they feel unutterable gloom, and so are dead women above the ground tied to living men, and men without a human hope of health mated to joyous beauty and animation."
It seemed at this point that Mr. Waples shrank away down to the ground, and the Great Dipper loomed up high as the mountain of High Rock. ”

“ Do thou decide, who art full of wisdom; for I am ignorant in thy eyes, and heavy with sins."
The cross, resplendent, seemed to wear a visible countenance. Wrapped in Issachar's arms, like a babe to its mother, young Abraham extended his hands to the effigy, and in its beams a wondrous consolation of love and rest returned to those poor companions, reconciling them to their helplessness in the presence of the Almighty awe.
"Child of God!" exclaimed the Jew, "thou beauty of the Gentiles, I gave thee life but for a span, and thou seemest to bring to me the life immortal." ”

“ It was the captain's delight, while ashore, to have every timepiece, stationary or portable, taken apart in the presence of his daughter and himself, while he told his sailor yarns, and Lois stood ready to serve his punch, or pass to the fat, smooth-faced, cheerful Minuit the pieces of mechanism: brass gimbals, chronometer-boxes, wheels and springs, ship-glasses, compasses, the manifold parts of little things by which men grope their way out of sight of land, hung between a human watch and the crystal shell of the embossed heaven. ”

“ Nature and night were in the swoon of love or death. Parting their drowsy curtains went Waples through the muffled echoes, impelled by nothing greater than a human thirst.
He saw his shadow, at length, fall down the steep stairs of the valley of High Rock Spring, as he stood at the top of the steps uncovered to the moon. It was a shadow nearly a hundred feet long, a high-cheeked head without a chin and all nose, like the profile of a mountain. ”

“ I am too old to try for life or fear to die, but thou art full of youth and beauty, and Israel needs thee in the world behind me. Let me bless thee, Abraham, and commit thee to God."
The water entered the cracks of the cabin; a pitching motion, as if it were afloat, made the son of the negro cling closer to the Jew.
"Father," he said, "I have passed the bitterness of death. When the vessel struck and threw me into the surf, I cried to God and fought for life. The waves rolled over me, and the agony of dying so young and happy grew into such a terror that I could not pray. ”

“ Paul was too young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him; but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had to look back upon—cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one distinct and dreadful idea of gain—to be filched from that dusky bosom when its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble lips might lisp the accents of servility. ”

“ There was no bank at Ross Valley, but people began to say that old Jabel Blake had particles of gold in the flinty composition of his life, and that his trip to Washington had made him gentler and wider in his charities. He was attentive to young children. He encouraged young lovers. He lifted many errant people to their feet, and started them on their way to a braver life of sacrifice. And fortune smiled upon him as never before. His mills went day and night, stopping never except on Sabbaths. ”

“ I found New York the noisiest city in the world, and felt that a week's tenure would drive me mad. A fire occurred in Broadway the night of my arrival, and the din of the mobs which ran to its relief was greater than all the combined clamors of Europe. So I resorted to a beautiful village called Wyoming, in the heart of the Susquehanna mountains, and passed the month of September in comparative quiet. If any place in the world is shut in from brawls and storms, it is this historic valley. ”

“ At this moment an old Indian woman, the mother of the boy whom Nanking had desired to amuse, threw herself between the upraised spears and the laughing widow's son. She shouted something very earnestly, and then stretched herself at Nanking's feet. All the other Indians also flung themselves down in fear or revulsion of feeling, and some crawled in another minute to where the burning coals were strewn over the sward, and with their fingers or with tree-boughs returned these coals to the fire, while others quenched the fire itself with water from the torrent. Nanking had never lost his temper. ”

“ The house rocked like a sailing vessel, and the strong sea-fogs seemed to close them round.
"We are sailing to sea," whispered the Jew. "It is too late to escape. The next billow may fling us apart, and our bones shall descend amongst the oyster-shells to build houses for the nutritious beings of the water. Thence, some day, my son, from the heavens God may drop His tongs and draw us up to Him, as on this night thy father and I drew the casket, many years ago. ”

“ I repent of my folly and wickedness, and entreat you to speak to me!"
"Heaven has forgiven you, Elk MacNair!" muttered the spent Congressman. "Your father's friend has spared your fame and my feelings at the expense of his fortune. It has taken the bank of Jabel Blake—the dream of his life—to save you from a dishonored name, and to give you a wife too worthy for you!"
He put a piece of paper in the lobbyist's hands. It said:
"Arthur, I have given you the last gift in my power—a costly and a dear one—to keep your brother from disgrace, and to save you both remorse. ”

“ What is there in me which broods upon his just and honorable life, and which he cannot drive away though he tries? Has he some learned superstition, some religious vow or mistaken sacrifice?"
Perry turned down a lane and then into the bed of a frozen brook, and coming in sight of the broad river, espied his father, gun in hand, stealthily creeping under a load of brush and twigs which the Judge's negro had piled about his back and head, to conceal his figure from a flock of ducks that were bathing and diving in an open place of deep water, to which the ice had not extended. ”

“ They did not like to play with Dutch boys, but Nanking was only a big idiot, and they did not harbor malice against him.
"He! Zoo!" they cried; "wilt thou play?"
"Yes, directly. But tell me, Peter Stalcop, and you, Paul Mink, do the very poorest little boys in Sweden get nothing on Christmas?"
"Ah, Zon der tuijfel! without doubt," cried the boys. "Old Knecht Clobes, your Santa Claus, is a bad man. That is why he gave the Dutch our country here. And in Sweden, too, he turns people to wolves, and brothers and sisters tear each other to pieces."
"But not in Holland," exclaimed Nanking. ”

“ I do not need to study the bent, broad shoulders and thin sinewy limbs to measure the hardness and steepness of his path; he climbed it like a bridegroom, humming quaint snatches of hymns to lull his human waywardnesses, and all the fever and errantry of our own vain career shrink abashed before his high devotion.
That I have turned out a rover is not odd; for the travelling preacher's son is cradled upon the highway. ”

“ It was nearly a century and a half old when Minuit set his sign there, before General Washington went past it to be inaugurated. From Fithian's window the pleasant land was seen spread out below him beyond the Christina; and the Swedish, Dutch, and English farms smiled from their loamy levels on sails which moved with scarcely perceptible motion through the narrow dykes planted with greenest willows. ”

“ But she was of a natural grace that hard work could not make awkward; work only gave her bodily power, brawn, and form. Though no more than seventeen years of age, she was a superb woman, her chest thrown forward, her back like the torso of a Venus de Milo, her head placed on [95] the throat of a Minerva, and the nature of a child moulded in the form of a matron. Joyce Basil had black hair and eyes—very long, excessive hair, that in the mornings she tied up with haste so imperfectly, that once Reybold had seen it drop like a cloud around her and nearly touch her feet. ”

“ It was a surprising thing to the people of Chincoteague, when the news went round that he had been over to court at Drummond-town and given his recognizance to bring up the orphan boy—whom he named Abraham Purnell—so that the county should not be at the expense of him, and he also brought out from New York, on the Eli's next trip, a Hebrew woman to be the boy's matron. Suckled at a negro's breast, Abraham grew to a vigorous youth, resembling his guardian's race and his mother's as well, in the curling nature of his hair and the brightness of his eyes. ”

“ He puts drunken Indians in the stocks and ties mighty smugglers up to the whipping-pump. But Saint Nicholas will punish him if he calls me an idiot."
"Ah! Nanking," replied the widow, "nothing can curb your uncle—neither the valiant Captain Hinoyossa, nor the puissant director of every thing, great Beeckman, nor hardly Pietrus Stuyvesant himself."
"I know who can frighten him," exclaimed the big idiot. "Santa Claus! He's bigger than a schout. Mother, his whip-lash can reach clear over New Amstel—isn't it so? How many deers and ponies does he drive? Will he bring me any thing this year?" ”

“ Preaching, ha! ha! Preaching the miracle of the God in the manger, the baby of the maid. You prayed and travelled for the good of Christians. The time came when you practised that gospel. You married the daughter of a slave. Then they cast you off. They outlawed you. You were made meaner, Levin Purnell, than the Jew of Chincoteague!"
The speaker was a bearded, swarthy, low-set man, who looked out from the cabin of a pungy boat. His words rang in the cold air like dropping icicles articulate.
"I know you, Issachar," exclaimed the outcast preacher. "They say that you are hard and avaricious. ”

“ The drowsy dash of the low surf on the bar beyond the inlet was harsh to this still and shallow haven for wreckers and oystermen. It was very far from any busy city or hive of men, between the ocean and the sandy peninsula of Maryland.
But no land is so remote that it may not have its banished men. The outcast preacher had committed the one deadly sin acknowledged amongst those wild wreckers and watermen. It was not that he had knocked a drowning man in the head, nor shown a false signal along the shore to decoy a vessel into the breakers, nor darkened the lighthouse lamp. ”

“ When I admit that these reminiscences are real, it will at once be inferred that I am a preacher's son. The general reputation of my class has been bad since the day of Eli; but I affirm and maintain that reason does not bear out this verdict, however obstinate experience may be. For why should the best parents have the worst children? and that our itinerant sires were godly and self-sacrificing men the most prodigal of their boys must confess. No flippant or errant example rises before me when I take my father's portrait in my hand and recall the humility and heroism of his life. ”

“ In his rugged face the marks of that antiquity which has something stately in the lowest types of the Jew, and in this one an almost Mosaic might, were softened to a magnanimity where death had nothing to contribute but its silence and respect. Laying them together, the fishermen and idlers looked at them with a superstition partly of remorse and mild remembrance, and the star of Christmas twinkled over them in the sky. ”

“ Such had been the dimensions of the High Rock Spring.
But it was now a mountain, rising high in the air, and flowing crystal and gold, like a volcano in an eruption of jewels. The pyrites of sulphur and motes of iron, that formerly gleamed in the rills that trickled down its slopes, were now big as cascades, filled with carbuncles and rocks of amethyst. A mist of soft splendor, like the light of stars crushed to dust and diffused around the mountain's head, revealed an immense multitudes of people scaling the slopes, and drinking ”

“ Turning from Broadway to lesser streets of cheap hotels and plain boarding cottages, where weary women and girls had drudged all day long, and washerwomen moaned and fluting and ruffling were the amusements of the poor, Andrew Waples became haunted with the idea that Saratoga was poisoned, that every soul in the village was dead, and that he was to be the last man of the century to drink of the Springs. ”

“ Amongst the dippers, conspicuous by his benevolent face and clothing of a butternut color, was the Great Dipper himself, directing operations.
"Drink freely!" he exclaimed, "for the night is going by. Sir William Johnson has ordered his litter, and the company is breaking up. Drink while you may, for the sun is soon to arise, and ye who have no stomachs will be exposed and disgraced."
"Hark ye! old friend," whispered Andrew Waples to the Great Dipper, "are there here people alive, as well as dead people, and why do they fear exposure?" ”

“ I moved my hand with an effort, and my eyelids were so weak that I could not unseal them for a time.
"I was lying in my old chamber at Glengoyle, and Heraine was sitting at my bedside. Her garments were sable, her brown hair thin, her face placid, as of yore, but marked by deep-seated grief, and the magnetism of will and courage was gone from it. To the eye she was the same; to the mind, a weak and broken thing. Crime had changed both our natures; she had been tutor and governess before, and I the passive, submissive creature; but sin had made me bold, and sorrow worn her to a woman. ”

“ Nanking covered them with dry driftwood and boughs of trees, and sailed again to New Amstel, where he arrived before breakfast.
At breakfast Nanking found upon his bench a beautiful new gun.
"It is thine, good child," said Ffob Oothout, "for sparing me those lashes. Thy churlish uncle felt so reproved by thy innocent words that he set me free. Widow, here is a spiegel for thee, a looking-glass to see, unseen, whoever passes up or down the street. That is a woman's high privilege everywhere. Thou shalt be, erelong, the best-dressed wife in all New Amstel. ”

“ By the time Europe had wearied of the sword, the fatality attending high living, large slave-tilled estates, the love of official society, and the defective education of the young men of tide-water Virginia and Maryland, produced a new class of native-born errants and broken profligates at Washington, and many a life whose memories began with a coach-and-four and a park of deer ended them between the coverlets of a poor-house bed. ”

“ Mark his back well!"
The sailor, as he seemed to be, looked at Nanking without fear. "Come, earn your money," he said.
"Uncle," cried Nanking, throwing down the whip, "how can I whip this man who never injured me? Do not all the people smuggle in New Amstel? Was it not to stop that which brought the mighty Director Stuyvesant hither with the great schout of New Amsterdam, worshipful Peter Tonneman? Yes, uncle, I have heard the people say so, and that you have smuggled yourself ever since your superior, the glorious Captain Hinoyossa, sailed to Europe." ”

“ Before was the barren field of honor.
How short is the struggle betwixt youth and selfishness, that sum of all diseases and crimes; that selfishness out of which wars arise and hell is habitated!
A poor, overworked Christian negro, a slave in the tavern, hearing the sobbing of Robert Utie and aware that one of the duellists occupied that room, lifted the latch, and wakened the wretched boy from his remorse. ”