Bartram

“ George Bartram’s visits have lately grown more and more frequent to the family at Portland Place—so certainly I can assure you that Norah is finding a relief under her suspense, which is not of my bringing, and a hope in the future, which I have not taught her to feel.
“It is needless for me to say that I tell you this in the strictest confidence. God knows whether the happy prospect which seems to me to be just dawning will grow brighter or not as time goes on. The oftener I see Mr. George Bartram—and he has called on me more than once—the stronger my liking for him grows. ”

“ He then told me that Bartram was the temple of liberty, that the health of a whole life was founded in a few years of youth, air, and exercise, and that accomplishments, at least, if not education, should wait upon health. Therefore, while at Bartram, I should dispose of my time quite as I pleased, and the more I plundered the garden and gipsied in the woodlands, the better. ”

“ So the noise frightens me!"
"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin. ”

“ Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their voices together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine and narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and he of them.
There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous [3] man, now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. ”

“ I strongly urge you to use your influence, on every occasion when you can fairly exert it, to strengthen that growing attachment, and to place it beyond the reach of any coming disasters, while you have the opportunity of doing so. When I tell you that the fortune of which Mrs. Noel Vanstone has been deprived is entirely bequeathed to Admiral Bartram; and when I add that Mr. George Bartram is generally understood to be his uncle’s heir—you will, I think, acknowledge that I am not warning you without a cause. ”

“ May Bartram had her strange faint smile. “Oh no, it hasn’t passed you by!”
“But if I haven’t been aware of it and it hasn’t touched me—?”
“Ah your not being aware of it”—and she seemed to hesitate an instant to deal with this—“your not being aware of it is the strangeness in the strangeness. It’s the wonder of the wonder.” She spoke as with the softness almost of a sick child, yet now at last, at the end of all, with the perfect straightness of a sibyl. She visibly knew that she knew, and the effect on him was of something co-ordinate, in its high character, with the law that had ruled him. ”

“ Miss Bartram's heart came to her eyes, and read, at last, the question in Leonard's. It was: “I as man, and you, as woman, are equals; will you give me time to reach you?” What her eyes replied she knew not. A mighty influence drew her on, and a mighty doubt and dread restrained her. One said: “Here is your lover, your husband, your cherished partner, left by fate below your station, yet whom you may lift to your side! Shall man, alone, crown the humble maiden,—stoop to love, and, loving, ennoble? Be you the queen, and love him by the royal right of womanhood!” ”

“ In 1786 he became a member of the American philosophical society, and he was also connected with other scientific bodies. Mr. Bartram was the author of “Anecdotes of a Crow,” “Description of Certhia,” and “Memoirs of John Bartram.” In 1789 he wrote “Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians,” which was published in 1851 (“Transactions American Ethnological Society,” vol. iii.) . He drew the illustrations in Barton's “Elements of Botany,” and many of the most curious and beautiful plants of North America were illustrated and first made known by him. ”

“ While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram’s mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
“Hold! hold!” cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. “Don’t, for mercy’s sake, bring out your Devil now!”
“Man!” sternly replied Ethan Brand, “what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. ”

“ She knew now a man must have some preference. The old French people betrothed their children without a demur on their part, but here each one had a right to his or her own most sacred feelings.
Mr. Bartram was nearing thirty at this period. Daffodil felt that she really had forgotten how he looked. He had grown stouter and now had a firm, compact figure, a fine dignified face that was gentle and kindly as well, and the sort of manliness that would lead one to depend upon him whether in an emergency or not. ”

“ The orthodox Friends might have done still better, and cited the case of John Bartram, [187] the father of American botany, who was disowned by Darby Monthly Meeting in 1758, for deistical and other unorthodox opinions. It has [Pg 191] been supposed that Bartram was disowned by Friends for placing the following inscription over his door:
[187] John Bartram, born near Darby, Pa., Third month 23, 1699. Was the earliest native American botanist. He died Ninth month 22, 1777. Bartram traveled extensively in the American colonies in pursuit of his botanical studies and investigations. ”

“ John Bartram in his Travels from Pensilvania to Onondaga, Oswego, and the Lake Ontario, in Canada, and, in a letter to Jared Eliot, Franklin, after mentioning the fact that Bartram corresponded with several of the great naturalists in Europe, and would be proud of an acquaintance with him, said: "I make no Apologies for introducing him to you; for, tho' a plain illiterate Man, you will find he has Merit." "He is a Man of no Letters, but a curious Observer of Nature," was his statement in a subsequent letter to the same correspondent. ”

“ Marcher returned. “‘Humanly,’ no doubt, as showing that you’re living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my secret.”
May Bartram smiled. “I don’t pretend it exactly shows that I’m not living for you. It’s my intimacy with you that’s in question.”
He laughed as he saw what she meant. “Yes, but since, as you say, I’m only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you’re—aren’t you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. ”

“ This, you see,” she said, “is the other side.”
“I think,” poor Marcher returned, “that all sides are the same to me.” Then, however, as she gently shook her head in correction: “We mightn’t, as it were, have got across—?”
“To where we are—no. We’re here”—she made her weak emphasis.
“And much good does it do us!” was her friend’s frank comment.
“It does us the good it can. It does us the good that it isn’t here. It’s past. It’s behind,” said May Bartram. ”

“ The deposition of this personage arrived but with her death, which, followed by many changes, made in particular a difference for the young woman in whom Marcher’s expert attention had recognised from the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn’t bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss Bartram’s now finding herself able to set up a small home in London. ”

“ It worked in the mind of Jefferson, took shape in the Lewis and Clark expedition and in the enterprise of John Jacob Astor, and reappeared in Irving’s Astoria. Carver’s volume still fastens upon the imagination, as it did in the time of Schiller, Wordsworth, and Chateaubriand.
§ 7. William Bartram. Coleridge, who found pleasure in Carver’s descriptions, doubtless set a higher value upon Bartram; he says in Table Talk: “The latest book of travels I know, written in the spirit of the old travellers, is Bartram’s account of his tour in the Floridas. It is a work of high merit every way.” ”

“ In the society of cities, most men give only the shallow, flashy surface of their natures to the young women they meet, and Miss Bartram, after that revelation of the dumb strength of an ignorant man, sometimes grew very impatient of the platitudes and affectations which came to her clad in elegant words, and accompanied by irreproachable manners. ”

“ Here John Bartram was born March 23, 1699.
His early attention was first directed to botanical studies by one of those accidents which seem to shape the destinies of all great men.
When a mere lad and helping his father with the work about the farm he plowed up a daisy. Despite everything the modest little flower kept intruding itself on his consideration, until after several days he hired a man to plow while he rode to Philadelphia to procure a treatise on botany and a Latin grammar. ”

“ They rapidly approached him; and, under an impression that one of them, who was at the head of the troop, was the emperor or grand chief of the Cherokees, Mr. Bartram turned out of the path in token of respect. In this supposition he was correct, and the compliment was accepted, for the chief, with a cheerful smile, came up to him, and placing his hand on his breast, then offered it to Mr. Bartram, and heartily shook hands with him. The chief made enquiry respecting a gentleman of Charleston, with whom he was acquainted, and afterwards welcomed Mr. ”

“ He learned that he could sell merely his plot, that the "continuity" work would be done by their own people; and delighted to receive a most satisfactory lump sum, John Harrison gave his name as Louis Bartram, and removed to another hotel, where he registered under his new name.
For Peter Crane had resolved to do a little investigating on his own hook, and he realized that since the girl at his home knew his present cognomen it must be changed.
Louis Bartram, therefore, sent for Douglas, and took that mystified young man into his confidence to a degree. ”

“ Miss Garth and I both saw him immediately on his return. He did what neither of us could do—he solved the mystery of the Trust being hidden in the charcoal ashes. Admiral Bartram, you must know, was all his life subject to fits of somnambulism. He had been found walking in his sleep not long before his death—just at the time, too, when he was sadly troubled in his mind on the subject of that very letter in your hand. George's idea is that he must have fancied he was doing in his sleep what he would have died rather than do in his waking moments—destroying the Trust. ”

“ Bartram had for some years been the leader of the unbelievers in the town; the logic of a young man who was smart enough to convince judges on the bench in matters of law was good enough for the general crowd when it was brought to bear upon religion. ”

“ The poet almost certainly refers, not to A Journal Kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia, Botanist to His Majesty for the Floridas; but to the volume of Travels by his son, William Bartram. Yet it is difficult to mention the son without reference to the father, whom Linnæus called the greatest self-taught botanist in the world. John Bartram, born in 1699, when almost seventy years old explored the St. ”

“ The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs—strange to say—was the shape of a human heart.
“Was the fellow’s heart made of marble?” cried Bartram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon. “At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him.”
So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments. ”

“ Admiral Bartram’s executors must be men of high standing and position; and they will do justice to you and to themselves in this matter by looking for the Trust.
“Under these circumstances, you will naturally ask, ‘What are our prospects when the document is found?’ Our prospects have a bright side and a dark side. Let us take the bright side to begin with.
“What do we actually know?
“We know, first, that the Trust does really exist. Secondly, that there is a provision in it relating to the marriage of Mr. George Bartram in a given time. ”

“ Here also were old peach and plum-orchards, some of the trees of which still appeared to be thriving and fruitful. From Sticoe, proceeding along a vale, and crossing a delightful brook, which falls into the Tenessee, Mr. Bartram followed its course nearly as far as Cowe, an Indian town which stands in a valley on the bank of one of the branches of the river Tenessee. He had letters of introduction to a gentleman resident in this place, who had, for many years, been a trader with the Indians, and who was noted for his humanity, his probity, and his equitable dealings with them. ”

“ Bartram, get up! Here's my prime pupil. See what we can turn out. You may examine him if you like. Willie: this gentleman is a very clever gentleman, so you must keep your wits about you. He'll put questions to you, I can tell you! There's as much difference between his head and mine, as between mine and the head of this stick." And Master Arthur flourished his "one-legged donkey," [210] as he called it, in the air, and added, "Bartram! you lazy lout! ”